Motor injury claims fall sharply during Covid-19 lockdown

There has been a significant fall in motor personal injury claims during lockdown, government figures show.

There were 60,000 fewer claims between April and June compared with the previous quarter, according to figures obtained from a freedom of information request by ACSO (the Association of Consumer Support Organisations), a trade association of companies that represent the interests of consumers in the UK’s civil justice system.

Motor injury claims from January to March were 155,860, roughly the same as the same period of 2019, but there were only 94,733 for April-June, compared with 146,844 in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

ACSO executive director Matthew Maxwell Scott said the Covid-19 lockdown period ”accelerates a long-term declining trend in the number of motor related claims registered with the CRU. These have fallen from nearly 830,000 in 2011-12 to just over 650,000 last year.” 

“Our expectation is that motor injury claims will start to rise again as people return to normal driving patterns after the lockdown, but the overall annual figures for 2020 will inevitably report another big fall in motor injury claims.

”This underlines our view that personal injury claims numbers cannot continue to be cited as the reason for increasing car insurance premiums.

”By continuing to work together the wider industry will also be able to resolve many of the outstanding problems with the small claims portal, the implementation of which has been delayed until at least April 2021”, Maxwell Scott added.

ASCO found a similar fall in claims across non-motor lines between the first and second quarter of the year.

Clinical negligence was down 46%, employer liability down 25%, and public liability fell 29%.

In June, claims service provider Gallagher Basset recorded a 57% year-on-year drop off on motor claims between April 2019 and April 2020 as people adhered to government guidelines to stay at home.