Covid-19 threatens LiP portal’s August launch date

In February, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB) confirmed that the new Litigants in Person (LiP) online portal, to be used for small track personal injury claims, would see its launch pushed back from April 2020 to August, to ensure that the new system would be fully operational and fit for purpose.

However, this announcement preceded the sudden thunderclap of the coronavirus pandemic, which has since taken UK businesses and families in a strangle hold as prime minister Boris Johnson attempts to enforce a nation-wide lockdown.

Undoubtedly, Covid-19 has spread more than just a virus –  many across the country are suffering from stress-induced distraction and anxiety, staff at small businesses face potential redundancies despite the government’s mitigating measures and numerous SMEs are under threat of permanent closure following statutory advice to temporarily shut up shop.

In this coronavirus-seeped landscape, is it realistic or even sensible to consider launching the Civil Liability Act’s reforms this summer?

Part one of the act’s reforms would see the introduction of the LiP portal, whereby claimants can process their own personal injury claims online, up to a revised £5,000 limit, without the aid of a solicitor; this is an increase on the previous £1,000 small claim limit.

The act also allows a new tariff table, listing set damages for whiplash injuries that impact claimants for between three months and two years; this strives to clarify compensation levels.

Donna Scully, director at Carpenters Group, believes the claims sector will need some “recovery time” before reforms of this magnitude can be implemented.

She said: “Given the immense social and economic upheaval we are all experiencing at this time and it’s unprecedented adverse impact on our market and customers, is this really the right time to proceed with a radically new claims system that may or may not be fully fit for purpose and which still requires huge amounts of work to be done?

“It is the biggest set of reforms this market has ever seen being implemented either just following or in the midst of a worldwide pandemic which has virtually locked down the UK. I think the UK claims industry needs some recovery time before the reforms hit it.”

Deadline redundancy

Many across the industry concur that the August deadline simply isn’t achievable when also attempting to put out Covid-19 related fires across different spectrums of claims – from travel insurance to business interruption (BI) coverage, the industry is at full capacity.

Shirley Woolham, chief executive at Minster Law, which specialises in personal injury claims, added: “I don’t think anyone on either the claimant or defendant side will think that the LiP portal is on track to launch in August, especially as the industry is wholly focused on navigating its way through the Covid-19 crisis, and the longer the crisis goes on, the more likely the delay because there will be little time or bandwidth available to resolve a host of outstanding issues with the current model.

“These [issues] include liability resolution, rehabilitation and credit hire, medical reporting, interim payments, valuing injuries and setting the tariff. None of these are minor issues. In meantime, we still haven’t seen a published set of rules from the Civil Procedure Rule Committee, which will be the key determinant to how the portal will operate.”

Matthew Maxwell Scott, executive director of the Association of Consumer Support Organisations (ACSO), thinks the government should “remove the obsession with imposing a deadline” around the LiP portal launch.

He continued: “We have always said that imposing arbitrary deadlines for the portal is a mistake because missed deadlines are inevitable for large-scale, complex IT projects sponsored by government.

“Ministers originally proposed that the portal be operational in April 2019.

“Our message to ministers is to remove the obsession with imposing a deadline and instead work with us to get the portal working properly in the interests of injured people. The portal makes sense, but it has to be consumer-friendly.”

Maxwell Scott added that the LiP portal’s implementation could now be pushed into next year, with some in the industry proposing an April 2021 revised deadline.

However, Kirsty McKno, chair of trade body the Credit Hire Organisation (CHO), said that an August 2020 deadline always looked “difficult”.

She said: “Even before the Covid-19 crisis hit the UK, the August 2020 deadline for the portal looked difficult.

“There are so many outstanding issues to sort out, including how injured people will access mobility if they need it following an accident, how that will be handled both within and outside the portal and how claimants will be properly and fairly advised in respect of points such as intervention and the impact of accepting an offer deemed to be full and final when there remain potential liabilities. This is a critical issue for credit hire companies and has yet to be resolved.

“Achieving a deadline achieves nothing if the portal fails to benefit consumers.”

Post-coronavirus world

For Woolham, potential delays to the LiP portal is merely one facet of what the insurance industry will have to face once the coronavirus outbreak has run its course – she believes the claims sector will need to re-group and prioritise how it will continue to be relevant in a post-coronavirus environment.

“I am convinced the impact of Covid-19 on our industry will be profound,” she said.

“Once we are through this crisis, the claims industry will need to take a long hard look at itself and explore whether the certainties of the pre-coronavirus period are still applicable.

“I strongly suspect that technology. use will be greatly accelerated in our civil justice system; that includes a simple and efficient way of paying minor injury claims, but this will be just one part of the claims industry that will be up for challenge and debate as a result of the past few weeks.

“At Minster Law, we are already beginning to rethink what we do and how we do it in anticipation of a very different marketplace. The one thing I can predict is that business won’t be the same as it ever was.”

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