’Before the OIC was introduced, the number of claims reflected the number of injuries,’ says president
The association of personal injury lawyers (APIL) has warned of a ‘clear justice gap’ after finding a drop in the number road injury victims seeking justice following the introduction of the Official Injury Claims (OIC) portal.
In a statement released yesterday (1 August 2023), APIL said that there had been divergence between claims and injuries since the OIC, which allows litigants-in-person (LiPs) to process their own whiplash injury claims following a road traffic accident, came online in May 2021.
APIL revealed that in Q2 2023, motor injury claims were 45% below pre-pandemic levels despite traffic volumes, a key indicator for the level of road casualties, being 3% above pre-pandemic levels.
To get the data, the firm tracked and analysed data gathered from Department for Transport figures, claims data from the OIC and freedom of information requests to the Compensation Recovery Unit (CRU).
“There is no denying the collapse in the number of road injury victims seeking justice since the OIC was introduced in 2021,” said APIL president Jonathan Scarsbrook.
“Road injury claims have fallen significantly, despite a very steep rise in road casualties.
“Before the OIC was introduced, the number of claims reflected the number of injuries. The divergence between claims and injuries we see now shows a very clear justice gap.”
’Stung twice’
Through the OIC, whiplash soft tissue injuries are aligned to specific compensation values via a tariff table, although mixed injury claims comprising of whiplash and additional injuries are not.
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In January 2023, the Court of Appeal ruled that personal injury claimants can recover damages for both whiplash and non-whiplash injuries without one cancelling out the other.
However, the ABI – on behalf of the insurance industry – appealed the judgement, fearing this would open the door to the “double counting of injuries” and, in turn, increase the level of awarded compensation.
In June, the Supreme Court granted the ABI permission to appeal the Court of Appeal’s ruling over mixed injury claims.
Through a separate analysis of data from the ABI and Office of National Statistics, APIL found the total cost of injury claims settled by motor insurers had fallen by more than a fifth since the OIC was introduced, while the price of motor insurance soared by 41%.
Scarsbrook warned that as a result, people were ”being stung twice”.
“People with genuine whiplash injuries have had their compensation slashed to arbitrary amounts, if they are even able to claim at all, and they are still paying high prices for their car insurance,” he said.
“We hope that insurers will be held to account when the Treasury reports on the benefits of the reforms to consumers. But by then thousands more people with real injuries caused by the negligence of other drivers will have fallen through the justice gap these reforms have created”.
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