Over 4 years on From the Civil Liability Act, Where Do We Find Ourselves?

This piece is by Jared Mallinson, Partner & Head of Counter Fraud at HF.

The Government’s intention with the Civil Liability Act in 2018 was to tackle rising insurance costs for consumers by reducing claim frequency and, specifically, fraudulent RTA related whiplash claims through:

· The introduction of the OIC Portal to simplify and streamline the process for low value PI claims, enabling self-representation;

· Fixing a tariff for lower severity whiplash injuries to reduce the damages available; and

· Raising the SCT level to £5,000 to reduce solicitors’ involvement and their costs from the process.

There’s been a measure of success and data shows that with traffic volumes at almost pre-pandemic levels*, there’s been up to a 50% reduction in claims frequency**.

However, while the OIC data records over 1.1 million claims having been submitted through the Portal as at the end of Q3 2025, only a third of those claims have been concluded and almost 90% of claimants are represented, undermining the intention of the Portal being suitable for direct access.

Unquestionably the number of claims submitted over the past 4 years for whiplash only injuries have reduced, and the small percentage of claims which are being settled are done so at much lower costs and in shorter time. However, rather than a solution to the issue the reforms were designed to resolve, we’ve seen a sharp increase in supplementary claims to areas of the body other than the neck, shoulders and back, now often termed “non-tariff injuries (NTIs)”.

Currently, we’re seeing an increase in the number of injury sites being claimed and increasing recovery times, all of which is resulting in more claims exceeding the SCT limit and the average total cost of claims rising. Indeed, within the HF Counter Fraud team, we’ve seen a jump in whiplash and NTI claims exceeding £5,000 from 27% pre-reform to 39% post-reform.

We can’t accept its coincidence that at the very same time whiplash claims became less profitable to pursue, both in terms of damages and solicitors’ costs, motorists began injuring other areas of their body more regularly. Rather, we take the view that a portion of these claims for NTIs are opportunistic and disingenuous, or unmeritorious at best.

Prior to May 2021 25% of RTA related injury claims dealt with by the HF Counter Fraud team involved NTIs. Since the reforms were introduced, there has been a complete turnaround with OIC data showing that consistently over the past 4 years, around 70% of claims include NTIs.

Around 22,000 claims are submitted to the OIC Portal each month, an annual average of 264,000 claims. Approximately 185,000 involve NTIs. The increase from 25% to 70% indicates that approximately 118,800 more claims now feature NTI’s than pre-reforms.

Current OIC data shows that the average sum paid for an NTI settled in the Portal is £1,064, albeit the claims we see outside the portal are worth significantly more. If the 118,800 additional NTI claims went unchallenged and concluded in the Portal, that would equate to a whopping £126 million extra in injury compensation alone each year. However, when factoring in that many of those claims will breach the Portal limits due to the inclusion of NTIs, meaning additional sums paid for both damage sand costs, that figure will rise exponentially.

The good news, however, is that these claims, when correctly vetted, identified and challenged, are extremely winnable.

Over the past 4 years our success rates have been steadily increasing, and the current position is that for over 2,500 claims concluded involving NTIs dealt with by the HF Counter Fraud team:

· On 53%, no payment is made for injuries at all; and

· On a further 16% we paid the whiplash injury only (and not the NTI claim).

Increasingly we’re encountering courts alive to the marked increase in claims for NTIs that they simply weren’t seeing in such frequency before the reforms. Indeed, in the past 12 months alone we have seen some startling claim outcomes, a small selection I’ve summarised below: –

o A claim for abdomen injuries was found to be fundamentally dishonest when it was identified that the condition pre-dated and was unrelated to the RTA. The claimant paid £7,500 in costs.

o A solicitor discontinued their clam for mixed injuries at trial paying £4k costs.

o A suggestion that the claimant had experienced blurred vision after the accident was dismissed and a £3,000 costs order imposed when it was identified the claimant had failed to mention the alleged injuries at post RTA GP attendances.

o The claim of a claimant who suggested that their forehead and knee collided with the dashboard was dismissed at trial with the court finding that such movement was incompatible with the accident circumstances and direction of impact.

o A claimant discontinued their claim for broken teeth when records revealed that the teeth had fallen out for completely unrelated reasons.

o Images were provided of facial injuries to a claimant who alleged their face impacted with both the steering wheel and door on impact. As well as disbelieving the claimant’s account of their movement on impact, the court found that concealed meta data on the images undermined their connection to the incident and found the claim fundamentally dishonest.

o 4 claimants, all occupants of the same vehicle, and all of whom claimed identical chest injuries, had their claims dismissed at trial resulting in a saving of over £50,000.

o A retired Police Officer discontinued their claim at trial and agreed to pay 75% of the defendant’s costs after accepting that his alleged ankle injury had been fabricated.

Of course, these are all fairly exceptional cases, but we’re regularly defeating high volumes of claims for more routine injuries such as banged knees, a twisted ankle or hip, seatbelt abrasions or hand and arm impacts by analysing the physics of a collision, the alleged mechanics of any alleged injury and obtaining medical notes to scrutinise claimant testimony

It can be argued the Reforms have achieved the objective of reducing whiplash claims. However, the rise in claims for NTIs has negated the benefit for insurers and consumers alike.

*Department of Transport

**Compensation Recovery Unit