British Columbia WorkSafeBC Claim Deadlines
The dates that govern a WorkSafeBC claim in British Columbia. Free. No email required. For anyone injured at work.
Two things on this page matter more than the rest, and both are easy to miss. A review can leave you worse off than before you asked for it. A phone call can save a deadline you are about to miss.
THE SIX CLOCKS
One of the six runs out inside your first month, and three of the six quietly give you eight days more than the number printed on them. Not drawn to scale.
Inside the first month Longer, and each counts from its own letter
Only the last one counts from the injury. The other five count from a decision, which means they do not start until somebody sends you something, and they are already running by the time you have read it twice. Everything below sets out what starts each clock, what the eight days do to it, and what to write down at the moment it matters.
Can a review make your WorkSafeBC claim worse?
Yes, and this is the warning to read before anything else on this page. A Review Officer can issue a decision that reduces the very benefit you asked them to look at. Asking for more is not a one way door.
The official guidance says to be cautious where you stand to lose more than you might gain. In plain terms, if you are already receiving something and you dispute the amount, the amount can go down as well as up.
The decision you ask a Review Officer to look at is the decision they can change, and they can change it in either direction.
That is not a reason to accept a wrong decision. It is a reason to get advice from the Workers' Advisers Office before you file, so you go in knowing what is at stake rather than finding out afterwards. That advice is free, and the last question on this page says who they are and what they do.
It is also a reason to be specific about what you are disputing. One Request for Review goes with one decision letter, so the letter you send in is the thing being looked at again. Choosing which letters to dispute is part of the decision, not an afterthought.
How long do you have to apply to WorkSafeBC?
One year from the injury. Report to your employer immediately regardless, and see a doctor and tell them it happened at work.
Those two steps are not the deadline. They are what the deadline is eventually judged on. An application asks what happened and when, and the answer is easier to make where somebody else wrote it down at the time, in a report at work or a clinic note, than where it is being remembered a year later.
This is the only clock on the page that starts with the injury. Every other deadline here starts on a decision letter, which is to say on a date somebody else chooses. The year is the one you can start counting today, without waiting for anything to arrive.
Say the words "it happened at work" to the doctor, and say them at the appointment rather than later. That sentence is what puts your injury in a record you did not have to keep yourself.
Is it too late to file a WorkSafeBC claim after a year?
If you are already past a year, the door is not shut. WorkSafeBC can accept a late claim where special circumstances prevented you applying in time. You will need to explain the delay, and they will decide first whether your reason is valid and only then look at the claim itself.
Those are two decisions in that order, which is worth knowing before you write anything. The first one is not about your injury at all. It is about the year, and what was happening to you during it.
Write down now what those circumstances were. Not being told you could claim, being too unwell, an injury that took months to reveal itself as work related. Whatever it was, it is worth more written down today than reconstructed later.
How long do you have to request a review of a WorkSafeBC decision?
Ninety days for a claims or assessment decision. Forty five days if it is a health and safety enforcement decision, which is a much shorter clock on a different kind of letter.
One form per decision letter. If you disagree with more than one letter, each needs its own Request for Review, signed by you or your representative.
Then expect to wait about five months. The Review Division normally completes a review within one hundred and fifty days of receiving your request. Knowing that in advance is worth something, because silence for four months is the process working rather than your file being lost.
Put that number somewhere you will see it. One hundred and fifty days is long enough for people to conclude nothing is happening and start again from the beginning, and starting again is not what this stage needs.
What is the eight day rule on a WorkSafeBC deadline?
You get eight extra days, and nobody mentions it. The ninety days does not start on the date printed on the decision. It starts on the eighth day after, which makes ninety eight days in total. The same eight day allowance applies to the thirty day WCAT deadline, making thirty eight. If you think you are a few days late, you may not be.
If you think you are a few days late, you may not be. Count again from the eighth day after the date on the decision.
| The deadline | Printed as | What you actually have |
|---|---|---|
| Request a review of a claims or assessment decision | 90 days | 98 days from the date on the decision |
| Appeal a Review Division decision to WCAT | 30 days | 38 days from the date on the decision |
| Appeal a prohibited action or reopening decision straight to WCAT | 90 days | 98 days from the date on the decision |
| Request a review of a health and safety enforcement decision | 45 days | Not confirmed. Treat it as 45 days flat |
| Judicial review of a WCAT decision | 60 days | Not stated. Count from the WCAT decision date |
| Appeal to the BC Court of Appeal | 30 days | Not stated. Count from the court's decision |
The allowance is published for those deadlines and not for the others. We have not confirmed that it applies to the forty five day health and safety deadline, so treat that one as forty five days flat and file early. The same caution goes for the court deadlines further down the page.
It counts from the date on the decision, not from the day it reached you. So the date printed on the letter is the number to write down, and the envelope is worth keeping with it.
If your claim were decided tomorrow, what would your file say?
People who were genuinely hurt have lost benefits over a date nobody recorded, a body part left off the first form, or a call nobody wrote down. Caught early that is fixable. A year on it is an argument you have to win. The British Columbia Workplace Injury Companion Guide keeps every date on this page in one place, with the form that goes with each and room to write down what actually happened. $24.99, yours to keep.
How long do you have to appeal to WCAT in British Columbia?
Thirty days from the Review Division decision, or thirty eight with the mailing allowance. The Workers' Compensation Appeal Tribunal is independent of WorkSafeBC.
If the deadline is days away, phone them. Call WCAT with your name, address, phone number, claim number and the Review Division decision reference. That records your intent to appeal in time, and WCAT will normally give you a further twenty one days to send the completed Notice of Appeal.
Ask for an appeal confirmation number and write it down. That number is your proof you called before the deadline. It is the single most useful thing on this page if you are running out of time today.
The call alone does not start the appeal. If the written form never arrives within the time WCAT allows, there is no appeal. Make the call, then send the form.
A phone call can save a deadline. It cannot start an appeal.
Watch for letters that are not about your own appeal. If someone else's review or appeal could affect your benefits, you will be invited to take part and given a deadline in that letter. Those dates are real and they are not on any chart.
Which decisions skip the Review Division and go straight to WCAT?
Two kinds of decision skip the Review Division entirely and go straight to WCAT with ninety days instead of thirty. Prohibited action complaints, and decisions on a reopening you formally applied for. On those direct appeals the eight day allowance still applies, giving ninety eight days in all.
Which route your letter takes decides how long you have, so read it for what kind of decision it is before you count anything.
| The decision you are holding | Where it goes next | You have |
|---|---|---|
| A claims or assessment decision | The Review Division | 90 days, plus the 8 |
| A health and safety enforcement decision | The Review Division | 45 days |
| A prohibited action decision | Straight to WCAT | 90 days, plus the 8 |
| A decision on a reopening you applied for | Straight to WCAT | 90 days, plus the 8 |
| A Review Division decision | WCAT | 30 days, plus the 8 |
| A WCAT decision | Judicial review, Supreme Court of British Columbia | 60 days |
| The court's decision on that review | The BC Court of Appeal | 30 days |
Read down the first column and the shape of the system appears. Most things go to the Review Division first and to WCAT second. Two things go to WCAT first. Nothing goes to a court until WCAT has finished.
What if you already missed a WorkSafeBC deadline?
File the form anyway, then ask for an extension of time. Filing late is better than not filing, because an application that exists can be saved and one that does not cannot.
Three accepted grounds are worth knowing. That WorkSafeBC or the Review Division never told you about your right to appeal and the time limit for it. That you retained a representative and they neglected to file in time. That new evidence came to light which was not reasonably available to you before the deadline.
Go and read the decision letter before you decide none of these fit. The first ground turns entirely on what the letter did and did not tell you.
You will also have to show you acted reasonably in the circumstances. If you moved house, for example, they will expect you to have told them your new address.
Before you apply for anything, count again. On a review of a claims or assessment decision and on an appeal to WCAT, the eight day allowance means people who believe they are a week late are often inside the limit. Ninety eight days, and thirty eight days, both counted from the date on the decision.
If the count still puts you outside, file and apply for the extension in the same breath. The application is about the delay, so the explanation you write is the case.
What can you do after a WCAT decision?
It is the final level of appeal, which is not the same as the final word. A WCAT decision can be taken to the Supreme Court of British Columbia on judicial review, and the petition must be filed within sixty days of the decision date. The court sometimes grants an extension, with no guarantee.
Understand what a judicial review is before you pin hopes on it. It is not a rehearing. A judge looks at a narrow set of questions about how the decision was made rather than reweighing the medical evidence. If that application does not succeed, the court's decision can be appealed to the BC Court of Appeal within thirty days.
Which is the argument for building the file early. A process argument is much harder to make than a good record was.
Dates are only half of it. Knowing when something is due does not tell you whether your employer is legally required to keep you employed, when that duty runs out or how to record a return to work so what you were asked to do can be measured against your restrictions.
Recovering after a workplace injury in British Columbia covers the whole process and is free to read. Hurt in another province? Start from the guides by province and territory.
I was hurt in a vehicle at work. Does WorkSafeBC pay, or ICBC?
WorkSafeBC is the first payer for treatment when you were hurt on the job. Two systems touch the same injury, and the motor vehicle side has its own clocks, including a treatment window capped both by twelve weeks and by a set number of visits, and a receipt deadline that runs per expense. Our British Columbia ICBC page sets those out.
So two sets of dates run at once, on two sets of letters, and neither system counts the other's days for you. This page is the WorkSafeBC side of it. The motor vehicle side has a page of its own because its clocks are shorter, and a twelve week treatment window is spent long before a year to apply has run out.
Did the WorkSafeBC deadlines change in 2026?
We cannot tell you that nothing changed. We can tell you when this page was last checked, and against what. The limits above were verified in August 2026 against WorkSafeBC's own pages on submitting a request for review and on review and appeal, the WCAT pages on giving notice to start an appeal and on getting a final decision, and the Workers' Advisers Office factsheets on appeals to WCAT and on extension of time applications. Those sources are listed in full at the foot of this page.
What did change in August 2026 is this page. An earlier version stopped at WCAT and did not tell readers that a WCAT decision can be taken to the Supreme Court of British Columbia within sixty days, or that the court's own decision can go to the Court of Appeal within thirty. It gave one ground for an extension of time where three are published. It did not say that the phone call to WCAT does not by itself start an appeal, that direct appeals carry the eight day allowance as well, or that the Review Division normally takes one hundred and fifty days to decide.
That is the reason to be careful with older articles. An article that ends at WCAT is not wrong about WCAT. It is simply finished before the sixty days that start the moment WCAT decides, and sixty days is not long to discover a route you did not know existed.
Do I need a lawyer or a representative in British Columbia?
Not to file. A Request for Review is signed by you or your representative, and you can phone WCAT yourself to record an intent to appeal. Both of those are steps the process expects an injured worker to be able to take alone.
There is free help, and most people never hear about it. The Workers' Advisers Office is a BC government office, independent of WorkSafeBC, that gives free advice and can represent injured workers in reviews and appeals. If you are unionized, your union will usually have people who do this constantly.
Given that a review can reduce your benefits, speaking to them before you file is not an optional extra here. It is the difference between a considered decision and a gamble.
Call early rather than late. Advice is worth more while the ninety days are still running than after an extension of time has become the only route left, and an adviser can tell you what a particular decision letter actually puts at risk.
Last verified: August 2026
Checked against: WorkSafeBC's own pages on submitting a request for review and review and appeal, the Workers' Compensation Appeal Tribunal pages on giving notice to start an appeal and getting a final decision, and the Province of British Columbia Workers' Advisers Office factsheets on appeals to WCAT and extension of time applications.
Added in August 2026. An earlier version of this page stopped at WCAT and did not tell readers that a WCAT decision can be taken to the Supreme Court of British Columbia within sixty days, or that the court's own decision can go to the Court of Appeal within thirty. It gave one ground for an extension of time where three are published. It did not say that the phone call to WCAT does not by itself start an appeal, that direct appeals carry the eight day allowance as well, or that the Review Division normally takes one hundred and fifty days to decide.
Deadlines change. If you find something on this page that is out of date, write to Recovery@hurtsquare.ca and we will correct it publicly.
Keeping the record these deadlines depend on
Every clock here starts on a letter, and one of them can be rescued by a phone call you will only remember making if you wrote down the confirmation number. Keep the envelopes as well as the letters. The date on the decision is what the eight day allowance counts from.
Two things decide how an injury claim goes. What you wrote down and whether you did the right thing at the right time for where you live. The National Workplace Injury Recovery Guide handles the first, the daily record of symptoms, appointments, calls and costs that a claim is eventually judged on. The British Columbia Workplace Injury Companion Guide handles the second, the deadlines on this page and the forms, boards and appeal routes behind them. People who have only one tend to end up with a careful record aimed at the wrong process, or the right dates and nothing to put in front of them.
Your Recovery. Documented. Protected.
EVERYTHING ON THIS PAGE, AND WHAT COMES NEXT
The British Columbia Workplace Injury Companion Guide
This page tells you the dates. The guide walks you through them, and gives you somewhere to write down what happened on each one.
- All six clocks, with what starts each one and where the eight days apply
- The route each decision takes, from the Review Division to WCAT to the courts
- What to write down the day each WorkSafeBC letter arrives
- The extension of time grounds, and what an application has to show
$24.99 · instant download · yours to keep
See the British Columbia Workplace Injury Companion GuideMost people take it with the National Workplace Injury Recovery Guide, which is the daily record the dates hang on.
Not ready for a guide? The checklist for the first week after a workplace injury is at hurtsquare.ca/7. It is free and asks nothing of you.
This page is general information for people in British Columbia. It is not legal or medical advice. Rules differ by province and change over time. Confirm anything specific to your situation with a representative, WorkSafeBC or the Workers' Advisers Office.