GBUK Technical Director, Andy Sewell provides an update on the Whiplash Portal and Mixed Injury Working Group: 

Last week the Official Injury Claims Portal released the first MI pack detailing the claims presented from May 31^st to the end of August.  Claims Portal continue to release monthly MI but we have been unable to compare the impact on new claims into that Portal until now. 

The 45,000 or so claims roughly equates to the drop off seen in the Claims Portal for RTA claims presented (see chart below for new CNFs received into Claims Portal for the last 12 months). However the total number of claims is still well below pre pandemic levels and time will tell what impact the easing of restrictions has in new injury claims as there is always a longer lag time between claims being presented here than in bent metal or property damage only claims.

Representation & Injuries Presented 

Of interest and as predicted is the split of represented v unrepresented claimants, with 90% of claimants having representation. This mirrors our own experience and shows how business models have been adapted to cater for the changes, this leads into the issue surrounding the types of injury claims being received.

Of the claims presented and again of no real surprise is that 94% of claims presented have an element of whiplash (awards covered by the new tariff) with 61% of all claims having an additional injury element to the claim or a ‘mixed damages claim’ as the term is now known with only 33% of claims being a tariff only claim.

Claims Exiting & Liability Decisions

Of the total number of claims received, 2,763 (6%) have exited the portal for a reason other than settlement. Claims can exit the OIC process in a variety of different circumstances.

In total 24,812 cases have had a liability decision made. Most decisions (22,365 or 90%) were made in relation to claims brought by represented claimants. A further 2,447 (10%) were made in relation to claims brought by unrepresented claimants. This mirrors the overall proportion of claims made by represented and unrepresented claimants using the service. 

Overall, 21,680 claimants have had liability admitted in part or in full by the at-fault compensator. This breaks down as 19,366 represented and 2,314 unrepresented claimants receiving admissions of liability. A total of 2,447 claims received a full denial of liability with 2,355 of these from represented claimants and 92 from unrepresented claimants.

In addition, causation was disputed in 685 claims (644 represented and 41 unrepresented).

Mixed Injury Working Group

The mixed injury working group has now agreed the basis on which they will work together to ensure that cases reach the Court of Appeal at the earliest opportunity.

Both the defendant and claimant groups have instructed lawyers. They will be coordinating the selection of claims to use as test cases.

The working group will continue to meet regularly and will keep timings under review.  Timings will depend on the volume of cases where mixed injuries are claimed and quantum is disputed and on the progress of such claims to court.

The group will continue to work collaboratively, with the aim of having an appropriate selection of cases to cover the range of scenarios below:

• Cases should all involve a mix of tariff and non-tariff injury.
• Cases should cover various circumstances including a range of interactions between the tariff and non-tariff injuries (examples of interactions, value, length or degree of suffering or loss of amenity but there may be others).
• At least one tariff case should ideally not include a minor psychological injury element, so that both tariffs are considered by the courts.
• Cases should either have injuries fully resolved, or the duration in the medical report for all injuries is not disputed.
• Multiple injuries tariff and another non-tariff injury.
• Multiple non-tariff injuries + tariff injury.

You can find a copy of the full PDF report here. 

If you have any questions then feel free to reach out to Andy here.