Should you accept your WorkCover lump sum offer?

If a Notice of Assessment has just landed in your letterbox or inbox, you are probably feeling two things at once: relief that something is finally happening, and pressure to make a decision you don’t fully understand. That is completely normal. This document is one of the most important you will receive in your whole claim, and the choice it asks you to make can be one you cannot undo.

This article explains, in plain English, what the Notice is, how the lump sum offer is worked out, and why one number on the page, your percentage of permanent impairment, can change everything. It is general information, not advice about your situation. But by the end you will understand the decision well enough to ask the right questions before you make it.

What a Notice of Assessment is, and when it arrives

Once your injury has stabilised and is not expected to improve much further, your impairment is formally assessed. Under section 179 of the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (Qld), your injury is examined and given a degree of permanent impairment, or DPI, expressed as a percentage. Who does the assessing depends on the injury: a psychiatric or psychological injury is assessed by a medical assessment tribunal, industrial deafness by an audiologist, and most other injuries by a doctor.

That percentage then drives the document you have received. Under section 185, once WorkCover has the impairment assessment, it must, within 10 business days, give you a notice of assessment in the approved form. The Notice must tell you three things:

1. whether you have a permanent impairment at all;

2. your degree of permanent impairment as a percentage; and

3. the amount of lump sum compensation you are entitled to, if any.

In short, the Notice is WorkCover’s official position on how much your injury has permanently affected you, and what, if anything, it will pay you as a one-off sum for that.

The lump sum offer: what it is, and what it is not

If you have a lump sum entitlement, WorkCover must include an offer of that lump sum in the Notice of Assessment. That requirement comes from section 187.

Here is the part that surprises many injured workers. The amount is set by a formula, not by an assessment of what your injury has actually cost you. Under section 180, the lump sum is calculated under a regulation by reference to your DPI percentage, fixed as at the day WorkCover makes the offer. The higher your percentage, the larger the figure; the lower the percentage, the smaller it is. The dollar figures in the regulation are indexed and change each 1 July, so the current amount should be checked against the regulation in force when the offer is made.

What matters for your decision is this: the lump sum is a measure of impairment, not a measure of your loss. It does not, and is not designed to, account for things like:

1. wages you have lost and will lose into the future;

2. the cost of future treatment, care, and assistance;

3. the effect of the injury on your ability to do your job, or any job, for the rest of your working life; or

4. pain, suffering, and the way the injury has changed your daily life.

Those things are the territory of a common-law damages claim, which is a separate path with very different rules. A lump sum that looks reasonable as compensation for impairment can be far less than the full value of everything an injury has taken from you. That gap is exactly why the next section matters so much.

WorkCover compensation vs common law damages in Queensland

The decision at the heart of the Notice, and why 20% changes everything

This is the most important part of the article, so read it slowly.

When you receive your Notice, the law treats you very differently depending on whether your DPI is 20% or more, or less than 20%.

If your DPI is less than 20%

Where your DPI is less than 20% (or you have no DPI), section 189 requires the Notice to tell you that you must make an irrevocable election. You must choose one of two paths:

1. accept the offer of lump sum compensation; or

2. seek damages for the injury at common law.

You cannot do both. Section 239 makes this explicit: where the Notice states a DPI of less than 20%, you are not entitled to both the lump sum and damages. You have to pick a lane.

And the choice sticks. Under section 239, once you elect to seek damages, that election cannot be changed after you give notice of it to the insurer (or, in the deferral situation described below, after you lodge a notice of claim). The same finality cuts the other way: if you accept the lump sum on a sub-20% injury rather than electing to seek damages, you give up the right to seek damages for that injury, for good.

This is why accepting a lump sum offer without advice can be a costly mistake. If your injury is one that might support a substantial common-law claim, taking the lump sum can quietly close the door on a much larger recovery, permanently, before anyone has worked out what that claim is actually worth.

There is one narrow exception, and it is not something to count on when you are weighing up the offer. Under section 266, a worker who has accepted lump sum compensation for a sub-20% injury may, in limited circumstances, still seek damages if the injury later deteriorates in a way that could not have been foreseen when the impairment was assessed, the deterioration is proved by fresh medical evidence, and it results in an additional degree of permanent impairment of at least 10% that brings the total to at least 20%. That is a high bar and a rare outcome, and separate rules can apply to particular diseases or terminal conditions. None of this makes the election safe to enter into lightly: for practical purposes, treat the decision as final and get it right the first time.

If your DPI is 20% or more

Here the rules are kinder, and it is worth understanding why. Reading sections 237, 189, and 239 together, if your DPI is 20% or more you are not forced to choose. You may accept the lump sum and still pursue common-law damages for the same injury. Section 237 sets out who is entitled to seek damages, and a worker with a DPI of 20% or more for an injury from the same event falls within that group without having to give up the lump sum first.

So the 20% line is not a small technicality. It is the difference between “take the money or sue, but not both” and “take the money and keep your right to sue”. One number on your Notice decides which world you are in.

“Accept”, “reject”, or “defer”, and the decision period

Under section 189, you do not have to answer on the spot. You can respond to the offer in one of three ways, by written notice, within what the Act calls the decision period:

1. accept the offer;

2. reject the offer; or

3. defer your decision.

There is an important default built in. If you do not tell WorkCover that you accept or reject within the decision period, you are taken to have deferred your decision. Deferral is not the same as walking away; it preserves your position while you get advice and work out the right move.

The decision period is 20 business days, running from when you receive the Notice of Assessment, which contains the offer. That is the window in which you accept, reject or defer under section 189. Treat the Notice as time-critical from the day it arrives, and get advice well before the 20 business days run out.

The decision period matters for a second reason. Under section 190, and subject to the exceptions that section sets out, your entitlement to further compensation for the injury ends at the earlier of two points: when you notify WorkCover of your decision about the offer within the decision period, or 20 business days after you receive the offer. In other words, the same short period that governs your election can also bring further compensation for the injury to an end, which is another reason not to let it pass without advice.

What happens to the lump sum if you later sue

A common and sensible worry is this: “If I take the lump sum now and it turns out I could have claimed damages, have I lost that money, or do I have to choose between them?”

For a 20%-or-more injury, where you can do both, the compensation you have already been paid is accounted for when your damages are worked out, so you are not paid twice for the same injury. How that happens depends on who you recover the damages from.

Where you recover common-law damages from your employer, which is the usual case for a work injury, the claim is a damages claim under Chapter 5 of the Act. Under section 270, the damages your employer is liable to pay are reduced by the total compensation already paid or payable to you for the injury. Where instead you recover damages independently of the Act from someone else, for example another person whose negligence contributed to your injury, section 207B makes the compensation you have received a first charge on that recovery, to be repaid out of it. Either way, accepting compensation along the way does not leave you worse off: it is reconciled against the larger damages recovery rather than paid twice.

This is one more reason the right strategy depends on your numbers and your circumstances, and on getting them assessed properly before you commit.

How to approach the decision

You do not need to become an expert in the Act. You need to make sure that, before you sign or elect, you understand four things about your own Notice:

1. Your DPI percentage, and in particular whether it is at, above, or below the 20% line, because that determines whether you can ever do both.

2. What the lump sum represents. It compensates impairment, not your full financial and personal loss, so it should not be confused with the value of a common-law claim.

3. Whether you may have a common-law claim at all, and roughly what it could involve, because that is the thing the irrevocable election can extinguish for a sub-20% injury. Whether your circumstances meet the legal test for a damages claim, namely that your employer failed to take reasonable care for your safety and that this caused your injury, is its own question and needs proper assessment. A damages claim against an employer is governed by Chapter 5 of the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (Qld), where breach and causation are set by ss 305B to 305D. The Civil Liability Act 2003 (Qld) does not supply that test, because its s 5 excludes an injury for which compensation is payable under the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act.

4. Your deadline, so the decision is made on your timetable and not lost by default.

The single biggest mistake we see is an injured worker accepting an offer because it feels like “free money” or because the deadline is looming, without anyone first checking whether accepting will surrender a far more valuable right. Once made, that choice can be impossible to reverse.

Is the lump sum offer the most I can get for my injury? Not necessarily. The lump sum is calculated from your impairment percentage under a regulation (s 180). It is not a measure of lost wages, future care, or the full effect of the injury on your life. Those belong to a separate common-law damages claim, which can be worth considerably more.

If I accept the lump sum, can I still sue WorkCover or my employer later? It depends on your DPI. If your DPI is 20% or more, you can accept the lump sum and still pursue damages (ss 237, 189, 239). If your DPI is less than 20%, accepting the lump sum instead of electing to seek damages means giving up the right to sue for that injury, and that decision is irrevocable (ss 189, 239).

What does “irrevocable election” actually mean? It means a once-only choice that, for practical purposes, cannot be undone. For a sub-20% injury you must choose between the lump sum and seeking damages, and once you have made and notified that choice, you cannot change it (s 239). There is only a narrow statutory exception, under s 266, where an injury for which you accepted the lump sum later deteriorates in a way that could not have been foreseen, the deterioration is proved by fresh medical evidence, and it adds at least 10% impairment and brings your total to at least 20%. It is a high bar and not something to rely on when you decide.

Why does 20% matter so much? The 20% threshold is the line the Act draws between “you must choose one or the other” (under 20%) and “you can do both” (20% or more). Reading sections 237, 189, and 239 together, a worker at 20% or more can take the lump sum and still pursue damages; a worker under 20% cannot have both.

Do I have to decide straight away? No. Within the decision period you can accept, reject, or defer by written notice, and if you do nothing you are taken to have deferred (s 189). Deferring protects your position while you get advice. Do not let the clock run out without a deliberate decision.

How long is the decision period? It is 20 business days, running from when you receive the Notice of Assessment. Within that time you may accept, reject or defer, and if you do nothing you are taken to have deferred (s 189). The same period also affects your entitlement to further compensation for the injury (s 190), so treat the Notice as time-critical from day one.

What if I think my impairment percentage is too low? The percentage in the Notice is the assessment that drives both your lump sum and which side of the 20% line you fall on (ss 179, 185). Because so much turns on it, it is worth understanding how it was reached and what options exist before you respond. This is something to raise with a lawyer promptly, given the decision period is running.

If I take the lump sum now and later recover damages, do I keep both amounts? For a 20%-or-more injury where you can pursue both, the compensation already paid is accounted for against your damages, so you are not paid twice, but accepting it does not bar the damages claim. If the damages are recovered from your employer, they are reduced by the compensation already paid or payable for the injury (s 270); if instead they are recovered independently of the Act from another person, the compensation is a first charge on that recovery (s 207B).

Should I just sign it to get it over with? Please do not, at least not before someone has checked your DPI, what the offer represents, whether a common-law claim is available, and your deadline. For a sub-20% injury especially, signing can permanently surrender a more valuable right. The decision is far easier to get right before you sign than to fix afterwards, because for many workers it cannot be fixed afterwards.

Do I have to pay anything to WorkCover to make this decision? No. Responding to the Notice, whether you accept, reject, or defer, is a step the Act provides for. Understanding your rights before you respond is exactly what this stage is for.

Before you accept or elect, get advice on your rights

A Notice of Assessment asks you to make a decision that the law may treat as final. The lump sum on the page is real, but so is the right you could be giving up to claim it, and for an injury assessed under 20% that surrender can be permanent.

Before you accept the offer or make your election, talk to us. Fraser Lawyers can explain what your particular Notice means, where your DPI percentage leaves you, and what rights are genuinely on the table, so that whatever you decide, you decide it with your eyes open and within time. This is about understanding your rights before a deadline forecloses them, not about pressuring you into anything.

If a Notice of Assessment has arrived, the clock is already running. Contact Fraser Lawyers to understand your position before you sign or elect.

Sources and currency

The legal points in this article come from the primary Queensland legislation below, current as at 14 July 2026:

• Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (Qld): the assessment of permanent impairment (s 179), the notice of assessment (s 185), the offer of lump sum compensation (s 187) and its calculation by reference to DPI (s 180), the accept, reject or defer decision within the decision period of 20 business days (s 189), the ending of further compensation for the injury at the earlier of the worker’s decision in that period and 20 business days after the offer is received (s 190), the irrevocable election where DPI is under 20% and its narrow deterioration exception (ss 239 and 266), who may seek damages and the 20% threshold (s 237), the reduction of employer damages by compensation already paid (s 270), and the first charge on damages recovered independently of the Act from another person (s 207B).
• Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (Qld), Chapter 5: the negligence test for a damages claim against an employer, including breach (s 305B) and causation (s 305D). The Civil Liability Act 2003 (Qld) does not supply that test, because its s 5 excludes an injury for which compensation is payable under the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act.

Queensland legislation is published at legislation.qld.gov.au and is periodically amended; the current in-force version should always be checked. Lump sum amounts are fixed by regulation and indexed each 1 July, so any figure must be checked against the amounts in force for the relevant period.

Related reading

• WorkCover claims in Queensland: the complete guide
• WorkCover vs common law: the 20% impairment decision
• How Fraser Lawyers helps with WorkCover claims
• Contact Fraser Lawyers

This article is general information only and is not legal advice. Queensland law and the figures referred to can change, and every situation turns on its own facts. Contact Fraser Lawyers for advice specific to your circumstances.

If you would like to discuss your matter, you can book a consultation or call (07) 5554 6116.