Developments in road traffic accident claims

The Ministry of Justice Reforms have resulted in a new process for dealing with road traffic accident claims valued at between £1,000.00 and £10,000.00.

The claims are now submitted to Insurers via a secure computer portal which acts as an electronic data exchange between Claimant Solicitors and Defendant Insurers.

The idea of this new process is to attempt to reduce the time frame for progressing these smaller claims to settlement. Prior to the introduction of the process, Insurers had up to 21 days to acknowledge safe receipt of the letter of claim and a further 3 months to accept or deny liability for such personal injury claims.  Under this new regulation the time frame has been reduced to 15 days.

There has been a number of teething problems with the portal and in a number of cases Insurers have failed to respond on the issue of liability within the 15 day period. This may result in the case being removed from the process and dealt with in the normal way just as higher value cases which would have fallen outside the process in the first place.

The new process has resulted in liability being dealt with a lot quicker in a number of cases, however, there are still delays which occur as a result of the need to obtain medical records, the provision of which is often very slow by GPs and Hospitals and further, delays still incurred as a result of waiting times for medical experts in the production of medico legal reports to assist in quantification of damages.

The Ministry of Justice hopes that the streamlined flow of information between Claimant Solicitors and Defendant Insurers will result in cases being dealt with quicker and at lower costs.

For expert advice in relation to road traffic accident and personal injury claims please contact Andrew McCusker or Kerry Jones on 0800 731 2852 or 02476 229 582, or email enquiries@fieldoverell.com