Guidance

Official Injury Claim Advisory Group Meeting: 28 October 2021, 11:00 – 12:30

Updated 18 March 2024

Applies to England and Wales

Attendees:

• Ministry of Justice (Chair)
• Civil Procedure Rule Committee
• Association of Personal Injury Lawyers
• Motor Accident Solicitors Society
• Forum of Insurance Lawyers
• Association of British Insurers
• Support Through Court
• HM Courts and Tribunal Service
• MedCo
• Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB)

Apologies:

• Law for Life
• Secretariat
• Ministry of Justice

1. Introduction

The Chair welcomed attendees. Group members introduced themselves and their organisations.

2. Advisory Board

MoJ confirmed the purpose of the Advisory Group (AG) is to provide expert input on the operation of the RTA Small Claims Protocol (RTA SCP) and the Official Injury Claim (OIC) service. The AG should be solution-focused and is tasked with considering and advising on the operational performance of the OIC and how it might be improved.

MoJ will consider the views of the AG and will make final decisions on changes to the operation of the service and will liaise with the Civil Procedure Rule Committee where suggested changes impacted on the RTA SCP. Policy changes remained a matter for MoJ Ministers, while any agreed technical changes will be for the MIB to consider and implement. The AG was not set up to consider behavioural issues, but any such issues identified could be flagged by group members for consideration where they impacted on operational performance and/or the customer journey of users.

AG members provided broad and diverse viewpoints, but additional members may be added to the AG in the future and specific experts may be invited to attend particular discussions according to need. The AG needs to be a forum where open and frank feedback on the operation of OIC can be provided by members. Therefore, meetings will operate under the Chatham House Rule’ to facilitate this safe space for discussion. Unattributed summary minutes and actions will be provided to members and published on the Gov.uk website.

The role of the AG and proposed ways of working were detailed in the draft Terms of Reference (ToR) distributed to AG members prior to the meeting.AG members confirmed they were content and confirmed the adoption of the ToR and ways of working.

DECISION 1: The AG Terms of Reference and Ways of Working were agreed by the group.

3. Service Update

3.1 Data issues

MIB explained the background to the development and build of the OIC process. The group were asked for feedback on how the dissemination of data can be utilised to improve system performance. The following points were made in discussion:

• data was important to the effective functioning of the AG
• more detailed data on a wider range of areas than those already published would be helpful
• confidentiality of personal data and competition law considerations needed to be respected and safeguards would be required
• MoJ could act as a clearing house for additional data requests
• up to date data was more useful than retrospective data
• there is a need to balance transparency with confidentiality and data protection
• the resource implications of providing detailed real time data needed to be considered
• statistical professionals from AG member organisations could provide additional input to MIB in relation to additional requirements.

The AG agreed that a sub-group should be set up to discuss the issue of data in more detail. AG members can feed their thoughts and reasoning for additional data to this group who can then discuss the practicalities and appropriateness of the requests made.

ACTION POINT 1: MoJ will convene a sub-group to discuss data issues in more detail, with the draft proposals to be brought back to the AG.

3.2 OIC performance and Quarter 1 data June – Aug 2021

MIB provided the AG with an overview of the data already published on the OIC website on 21 October on the first three months of service operation. A further breakdown of additional data was also presented to provide the AG with additional context. A helpful discussion was held in relation to:

• Dissemination of data on the types of query received by the OIC support centre as this would help the AG to build a better picture of the unrepresented claimant user experience;
• the factors affecting overall claims volumes, including:
  • the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on traffic levels, accident rates and driving behaviours;
  • the assumptions included in the published impact assessments;
  • the importance of cross referencing with Claims Portal and DWP compensation Recovery Unit data; and
  • the length of time required for volumes to reach a steady state following implementation.
• the number of claims which included an element of ‘mixed injuries’ or ‘exceptional injuries/circumstances’ with the AG noting that progress with the proposed industry working group on identifying appropriate test cases would be helpful;
• the current lack of significant claims management company involvement and whether this would change in future;
• early technical teething troubles and the issues relating to the rolling out of system fixes when dealing with multiple application programming interfaces and it was noted that MIB will provide a future change schedule to enable users to prepare; and
• the reasons for claims exiting from the portal where the AG noted that additional data would be helpful to understand what was happening in this area.

ACTION POINT 2: AG members to undertake a deep dive into ‘reasons for exit’ at 15 December 2021 AG meeting.

4. General remarks and feedback from AG members

AG members provided feedback on their/their members experiences of using the OIC service so far. In addition, members were asked to consider and propose potential operational changes to improve the service or user experience for both professional users and unrepresented claimants. The following points were made in discussion:

• members agreed that the application to application service used by professional users was perceived as less well implemented than the digital portal used by unrepresented claimants, although the variable levels of IT infrastructure used by some firms was a contributing factor;
• some practical changes for professional users would be helpful such as allowing users to add an offer for tariff injury in those cases where it is initially thought to be a non-tariff claim, enabling awards for minor psychological injury to be added later if required and an increased word limit for the explanation of events;
• for unrepresented claimants, direct user feedback (i.e. an exit interview process) would be helpful in generating information on user experience and it was confirmed that research will shortly be undertaken;
• the AG noted that some challenges to the process will arise as we see more claimants exiting the process and initiating court claims and that additional data on those claims which exit due to the identification of a ‘complex area of law’ would be helpful;
• there was a helpful debate about the quality of information being input by professional users and on potential poor behaviours such as pre-medical offers and deliberate delays in seeking medical evidence. It was noted that the highlighting of poor behaviours by the AG was helpful, but that in the first instance, any evidence of such should be directed towards the appropriate industry regulator for action.

ACTION POINT 3: AG members to provide MIB with any suggestions for operational system fixes.

ACTION POINT 4: AG members to write to the MoJ to provide views on helpful questions to be included in the unrepresented claimant survey.

ACTION POINT 5: AG members to provide suggestions for future agenda items.