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How Much Compensation Can I Claim For Stress At Work?

By Marlon Cooke. Last Updated 8th January 2025. Have you suffered work-related stress? Do you believe third-party failings were responsible? If so, did you know you could make stress at work claims? In this guide, we’ll answer “how much compensation for stress at work could I be owed?” and explain everything you need to know about your rights in this situation.

Work-related stress is one of the most common forms of work-related illnesses in the UK. People from all walks of life, performing a vast range of job roles, can suffer from stress at work. In many cases, compensation for work-related stress can be claimed. This detailed guide will help guide you through the claims process.

If at any point while reading this guide you would like more free legal advice on making a claim or if you’d like to make a claim, please get in touch with our friendly team. You can reach them in various ways:

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A Guide To Stress At Work Claims

A person sat outside an office with their head bowed and held between their hands, with their elbows resting on their knees

If you suffer from work-related stress or have done in an old job, then you may have a valid reason to claim compensation for it. You may want to make a claim against your employer, be it your current employer or a previous employer. When you are trying to claim stress at work compensation, you can make a claim for incidents occurring up to 6 years ago in the UK.

This guide is intended to help people who have or are suffering from work-related stress by giving them a detailed overview of the process of making stress at work claims, answering common questions asked by claimants such as “how much compensation for stress at work?”.

We’ll also provide some legal advice on what to do before making a compensation claim to give your case the best chance of success. Finally, we’ll explain the No Win No Fee claims service that we provide and how you could benefit from it yourself.

What Is Work-Related Stress?

To begin our guide on how to claim stress at work compensation, let’s look at a definition for work-related stress.

Work-related stress is a psychological and physical health condition that is either primarily caused by or significantly attributed to by a person’s working environment and job role.

Primarily, work-related stress is caused by pressure and unhappiness in a person’s working environment, such as stringent deadlines, the fear of unemployment, general dissatisfaction or even abuse from co-workers.

Whether these are tangible effectors that a person faces or intangible effectors that are simply imagined, significant work-related stress can result, often leading the suffer to develop issues coping with day-to-day life.

How Long Do I Have To Make A Stress At Work Claim?

Are you aware that personal injury claims, including stress at work claims, have a time limit within which they can be made?

In most circumstances, this time limit is 3 years from the date of the incident you wish to claim for or the date that you realised you were affected as a result of it. However, there are some exceptions that may apply to this limitation period.

For example, if the claimant can’t claim for themselves, whether they’re underage to make legal proceedings or they’re mentally incapacitated, a litigation friend can claim on their behalf. In such cases, the usual 3-year time limit would be frozen until the claimant was able to make a claim for themselves.

So, once an underage claimant turns 18 or a mentally incapacitated claimant gains the ability to pursue compensation, the time limit would come into effect, leaving them with 3 years to make legal proceedings. Alternatively, if a litigation friend makes their claim on their behalf, the time limit would come into effect once they entered into legal proceedings.

To see if you’re within the relevant time limit to make a claim or to learn more about whether you have grounds to make a claim in the first place, please get in touch today for a free consultation with one of our specialist advisors. In the meantime, please read on to learn more.

The Most Common Causes Of Stress At Work

Although there are many causes of work-related stress that can lead to people claiming stress at work compensation, there are several causes that are more common than others, including:

  • High workload – in some jobs, people are simply expected to do too much. Too much work piled up, or tight deadlines, lead to pressure, which can cause people to worry or panic.
  • Too much guidance – people who work in highly regimented jobs often suffer from work-related stress due to a lack of freedom.
  • Lack of support – people who find that they have little in the way of support from their fellow workers and managers can feel isolated.
  • Inadequate experience or training – people who are asked to perform a job for which they are not fully qualified may suffer anxiety.
  • Worrying about job security – for those at a risk of being fired, made redundant or their employer going out of business.
  • Abuse from work colleaguesbullying and harassment at work by work colleagues and line managers.
  • Toxic corporate culture – in some companies, a toxic, blame-oriented culture evolves, and working in such an environment is a significant cause of stress.
  • Bad management or management chain – where people have to report to several managers or are managed by an ineffective manager. Furthermore, being over-managed is also a significant cause of work-related stress.
  • Uncomfortable workplace – when your place of work is too cold, too hot, damp or uncomfortable in any other way.

If you believe you have a valid case to make a claim and would like to know how to proceed, please contact us. In the meantime, if you’re wondering “how much compensation for stress at work could I be owed?” or have any other queries, please read on to learn more.

Is An Employer Required To Do Anything To Help With Stress At Work?

If you’re wondering whether your employer has any legal responsibility to prevent you from suffering work-related stress, the answer is yes. If they fail to uphold this duty of care, you could be able to claim stress at work compensation from your employer.

The UK Health & Safety Executive outlines strict legislative requirements for employers dealing with stress at work. All employers have a minimum set of precautions that must be taken with the following aims in mind:

  • Employees are less likely to suffer from stress
  • Causes of stress are proactively sought out and removed from the work environment

However, many employers take matters much further, making sure that employees are reviewed regularly for signs of stress and that workplace counselling is available for people who are showing any symptoms, however mild.

To learn more about how to claim stress at work compensation and see “how much compensation for stress at work could I be owed?”, please read on.

Work-Related Stress Rights

If you are an employee in the UK suffering from work-related stress, you have rights and protections in place in health, employment and equality legislations.

Your employer cannot immediately dismiss you if you have been medically diagnosed with stress, or a psychological injury, and are taking time off work because of this. They are expected to try and accommodate your illness.

Your employer could also be liable for your work-related stress. If your stress was caused by something in the workplace that they will have been expected to address – e.g. bullying by a colleague that you had brought to their attention – then your employer may have breached their duty of care to you. You could in this instance have a right to sue them in the UK for compensation for stress and anxiety.

If you are looking to make a claim against your employer for breaching their duty of care to you, then please reach out to one of our advisors.

What To Do If You Have Suffered From Negligence

If you suffer from work-related stress or you have done in the past, you may be able to claim stress at work compensation for your suffering providing that third-party failings were responsible.

If you find yourself in this situation, then there are some things you can do to help improve the chance of your claim being successful, including:

  • Document a timeline of your stress – try and establish when you first noticed the symptoms of work-related stress, and what you believe may have caused it. Create a timeline of other events at work that contributed to your incident.
  • Speak to a professional counsellor – either at your workplace or through your GP. You will need a positive diagnosis of work-related stress from a registered medical professional to make a compensation claim.
  • Assess how it’s affected your life – such as lowering your enjoyment of social events, causing you to lose sleep due to constant worry, and acuter physical symptoms such as depression and anxiety.
  • Evidence any financial losses – if you have had to cancel a holiday, suffered loss of earnings through time off, or any other form of expense, then list these down so that you can claim compensation for them.
  • Get expert legal help – by using the No Win No Fee claims service that we offer, you could make legal proceedings with help from one of our solicitors

To get more help and advice on what to do when it comes to seeking stress at work compensation, please get in touch. In the meantime, please continue reading to see “how much compensation for stress at work could I be owed?”

No Win No Fee Solicitors

The legal fees involved in accident claims of any kind can be quite high. Even if you do pay your own legal costs, and you fail to win your case, you will lose them. But why take the risk? We have a solution.

We offer a No Win No Fee claims service. What this means, is that you won’t need to pay any fees at all during the time we are helping you with your compensation claim. If we don’t win your case, then you don’t pay us anything at all. No risk at all, so there is no reason not to begin your claim today should costs concern you.

If you have any questions at all about No Win No Fee stress at work compensation claims, please get in touch on the number at the top of this page.

Stress At Work Claims – Compensation Calculator

How much can people receive from stress at work claims? There is no real use in working out an average payout for stress at work compensation because every case is unique. Those working out your payout would focus on the specifics of your case rather than applying a pre-determined payment.

A settlement for work-related stress compensation can be split into up to two parts, or ‘heads’:

  • General damages, which address psychological injuries and physical suffering.
  • Special damages, which compensate for financial loss.

You can only get a special damages payment if you can prove your stress at work led to financial loss. One good example of this is a loss of earnings, in the event that you have to leave your job and can’t find a new job because of your experience, or if you need time away from work to recover.

All you need to do to receive a general damages payment is make a successful workplace stress claim. Those working out personal injury compensation can use different resources to arrive at a valuation for mental or physical harm. One such resource is a document called the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG).

The brackets contained in the document give compensation guidelines for different injuries. They are often used in online compensation calculators, and we’ve used them to compile the list below. The only thing to remember when reading our list is that the JCG brackets are just there as a guide.

Compensation Guidance

  • A payout for numerous serious injuries, on top of financial loss, could rise to £250,000 or more. This is just an illustration of how compensation could be awarded when various factors are considered, rather than being a JCG figure.

JCG brackets for general psychological damage are:

  • Severe – £66,920 to £141,240.
  • Moderately Severe – £23,270 to £66,920.
  • Moderate – £7,150 to £23,270.
  • Minor – £1,880 to £7,150.

For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the brackets are:

  • Severe – £73,050 to £122,850.
  • Moderately Severe – £28,250 to £73,050.
  • Moderate – £9,980 to £28,250.
  • Less Severe – £4,820 to £9,980.

Call For Free Advice And To Start a Claim

How much compensation for stress at work?

We hope that our guide has provided you with helpful insight into how you could seek compensation for stress caused at work.

You can always reach out to one of our advisers for any additional questions you may have. They could offer you free legal advice and go into more detail about everything we have discussed in this guide. They could also:

  • Give you a free evaluation of your eligibility to make a claim
  • Talk to you about how compensation for stress and anxiety can be valued
  • Provide you with information on the stress at work claims process

For any enquiries you have about work related stress claims, you can contact an adviser by:

Useful Links

Below are some links related to claiming stress at work compensation that might help you:

In addition, here are some other guides from our website:

Thank you for reading our stress at work claims guide, where we hope to have answered the question of “how much compensation for stress at work could I be owed?”.