22082 - Details of claims made, settled and pending under arrangements put in place since the riots of summer 2011
We have a received a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 for the following: Full details of claims made, settled and pending…
Details
We have a received a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 for the following:
Full details of claims made, settled and pending under arrangements put in place since the riots of Summer 2011. I would like for each month during the period:
- number of claims made from both the insured and uninsured
- number settled
- amounts paid out
- highest payment made
- grounds for claim/settlement
- amounts outstanding, etc, plus “Running totals” in each category for each month, and the final figures.
I would also like details of fraudulent or exaggerated claims (described by Lord Henley as “overgenerous”) entered and struck out, reduced or otherwise during the period.
We released the following information on 9 May 2012.
The Home Office does not hold comprehensive details of the claims made, settled and pending under arrangements put in place since the riots of Summer 2011. Under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 all claims for compensation are made to the relevant police authority or (in relation to London) to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.
The Home Office only holds a monthly summary of the overall running totals rather than the numbers received and settled per month, which is detailed information held by police authorities. It is not possible to calculate monthly figures from our data due to constant movement and fluctuation of dynamic figures held by police authorities, where figures are adjusted by the elimination of possible duplicates and other data cleansing.
Around 5,000 claims were made under the Riot (Damages) Act, of which almost 10% were from individuals and businesses without insurance. The rest came from insurance companies to compensate for payments made to their policy holders.
We set up a Bureau to process the uninsured claims and it received 1261 in total. After rejections (e.g. claimants already had existing insurance or claims were not covered by the Riot (Damages) Act such as business interruption or claims for cars) the Bureau had passed on 348 to police authorities and has just 76 more claims to resolve. 31 of these claims are classed as active where the claimant is responding to the Bureau whereas 45 are inactive where the Bureau has been unable to make contact with claimants for a long period of time despite repeated attempts.
Our latest data shows that around 92% of all valid uninsured individuals’ claims have now been settled by police authorities. In addition, a number of insured claims have since become new uninsured claims because insurers have repudiated policies or claims were below the policy excess. To date, police authorities have received 629 of these new Riot (Damages) Act claims from previously insured victims and 79% of these have either been rejected or settled. Typical reasons for rejection, for example, include claims for business interruption, personal injury and out of time applications.
The greatest volume of outstanding cases are from insurance companies seeking reimbursement from police authorities. There are 1063 cases (around 27%) outstanding of the 3883 insured claims received by police authorities. Most of these cases are waiting for documentation from insurers before they can be settled, however this does not impact on the victims getting compensation. The ABI have stated that 90% of individual claims have been settled and 85% of small businesses have received either interim or full payments. In general the outstanding claims are more complex and are from much larger multi-national companies who are more able to absorb the impact of their losses.