Fears about injured people not being able to claim through the new whiplash portal are borne out by the latest data, industry experts have said.

Official Injury Claim yesterday published its third set of user statistics, covering the period from 1 December to 31 March, which show that the vast majority of claims continue to be from represented people.

Of the 95,266 claims made in the period, 91% came from people with representation, with around three quarters using a law firm.

Liability decisions were made in around 62,000 claims, with almost 12,000 claims exiting the portal. 

Analysts say the latest figures – coming 10 months after the portal was launched – give an indication of long-term trends and show worrying features of the new system.

The Motor Accidents Solicitors Society said that, despite road traffic volumes being at near pre-Covid levels since last May, the OIC has registered only 209,442 claims. This compares with the 650,000 claims registered in the last full year before the pandemic.

Sue Brown, chair of MASS, said: ‘Such a dramatic fall cannot be attributed to the impact of Covid-19 and general economic factors, but must be associated directly with issues around the OIC and the new claims process.’

The Ministry of Justice legislated through the Civil Liability Act and created the OIC on the basis that higher numbers of claimants would be able to represent themselves. Pre-portal estimates suggested the proportion of litigants in person might be as high as 30%, but just 9% of claims have come from this group.

Brown added: ‘The combination of low volumes of claims and the low numbers of unrepresented claimants strongly indicates that many accident victims are either unsure about how to make a claim, are reluctant to make a claim without representation or are unable to pursue a claim through the OIC. All of these conclusions carry concerns about the structure and fairness of the new claims process and need to be investigated thoroughly.’

There may also be a logjam of cases where the litigant has brought claims for whiplash – which has a fixed tariff for compensation – and other injuries, which do not. These so-called ‘mixed tariff’ claims accounted for 64% in the most recent period, and the outcome of these may have to wait for the issue to be tested in the courts.

The Association of Consumer Support Organisations said the portal, funded by the insurance industry, needed to be ‘saved from failure’. Matthew Maxwell Scott, executive director, said: ‘An urgent rethink is required in order to prevent complete sclerosis in the civil justice system. The OIC was meant to make it easy for injured people to settle their claim, but this self-evidently is not happening. As a result the justice system, already creaking from record court delays, risks falling over a cliff.’

OIC said it is ‘still early days’ in the life of the service and too soon to draw meaningful conclusions.

 

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