Personal injury lawyers have criticised elements of the media for suggesting a multi-million pound compensation bill for councils is the fault of claimants.

Press critics were quick to blame the so-called compensation culture after it was revealed that local authorities had paid out £75m to accident victims in the past five years. With insurers covering only larger awards, 13 councils had to pay more than £1m from their own funds after admitting liability.

One national newspaper described compensation awards as ‘a catalogue of farcical payouts’.

The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers said it was concerned that reports suggested claims were largely trivial. Chief executive Deborah Evans said: ‘It is painted as if these claims are fraudulent or frivolous but in reality the councils have settled and known they were negligent.

‘It is perfectly right to make a claim if someone has been injured. The emphasis is on saying "this is wrong and people don’t deserved to be paid compensation". That takes away from the negligence that was caused in the first place.’

Shazia Yazmin, a personal injury solicitor at Hodge Jones & Allen, said: ‘In the current economic and political climate of austerity, press reports such as this can lead to understandable alarm.

'The suggestion that local authorities and insurance companies find themselves having to pay out compensation where no negligence has occurred is unfair to claimants, who often find themselves engaged in lengthy battles in order to recover compensation for the injuries and losses that have sustained due to no fault of their own.’