A complaint and a claim are different things
A complaint gets you an explanation, sometimes an apology, and sometimes a change to how a service works. A civil claim is a different route, and it is slower, harder, and needs evidence a complaint does not. Many people want the first and are sold the second.
Whether a complaint can lead to money depends on where you were treated. In England, the NHS complaints process does not pay compensation — it is a route to answers, not damages. In Wales it can: the Listening to People process includes an NHS redress scheme under which financial redress may be considered, subject to its own conditions and a scheme ceiling. Our NHS Wales redress guide explains what that does and does not mean.
It matters the other way round too: an apology is not an admission of negligence. Hospitals are expected to tell you when something has gone wrong and to say sorry, and doing so decides nothing about whether anyone was legally at fault. Being told that something went wrong is not the same as being told you have a claim.
What a claim actually has to prove
Two things, separately: that the care fell below the standard a competent professional would have provided, and that this is what caused the harm. Both are needed. Treatment can have a bad outcome without anyone being negligent — medicine carries risk that no one is at fault for — and care can be poor without having changed what happened to you.
Independent medical expert evidence is usually central to both questions, and often more than one specialty is involved, because the expert best placed to say whether care fell short is not necessarily the one best placed to say what difference it made. Our guides on breach of duty and causation take each question separately.
Time limits, honestly
A claim is normally subject to a three-year limit, running either from when the treatment happened or from when you first knew — or ought reasonably to have known — that your injury might be linked to it. That second date is a legal question decided on your particular facts, not an arithmetic one.
There are significant exceptions, and they are more particular than a summary can safely carry. Children, people who lack the capacity to conduct legal proceedings, claims after a death and claims brought late can each involve different statutory provisions, and which one applies turns on the facts — including, for some of them, the position at the time the claim arose rather than now. Courts also have a discretion to allow a claim brought outside the ordinary period, but it is a discretion and not a second deadline.
One thing is worth stating plainly here: making a complaint, requesting records or investigating a claim does not stop the court deadline. Those can all be running while the clock is.
Our Time limits guide sets out each of these separately, including date of knowledge, the rules for children and capacity, the different provisions that apply after a death, deliberate concealment and the section 33 discretion.
None of that means you should wait. It means that if you think you are too late, you may not be, and it is worth asking someone qualified rather than assuming.
What we do, and what we do not
RemedyBridge is not a law firm and does not give legal advice. We publish free information about the routes that may be available, and can help people contact an appropriate provider if they ask us to. If you send us the form below, a person reads it and gets in touch to talk it through. We do not decide whether you have a claim, whether you are in time, or what a claim might be worth — those are questions for a specialist solicitor working from your medical records and an independent expert, and anyone answering them from a web form is guessing.
You will not find an estimate of what your case is worth anywhere on this site, and you should be wary of anyone who offers you one before they have read a single record. What using a paid service can cost you.
