Guidance

Official Injury Claim (OIC) Advisory Group meeting: 30 April 2026, 10:30am to 11:30am

Updated 18 August 2026

Applies to England and Wales

Summary minutes and actions

Attendees:

• Ministry of Justice (Chair and secretariat) (MoJ)
• Motor Insurers’ Bureau (Official Injury Claim service operator) (MIB)
• Civil Procedure Rule Committee (CPRC)
• HM Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS)
• Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL)
• Motor Accident Solicitors Society (MASS)
• Forum of Insurance Lawyers (FOIL)
• Association of British Insurers (ABI)
• MedCo

Item 1: Introduction

1. The Chair welcomed attendees, outlined the agenda and provided the following update on the action from the April 2025 meeting:

i. MoJ to follow up with HMCTS for an update on the procedural issues at some courts – HMCTS confirm that this action is now complete. New guidance and job cards have been issued, in collaboration with the judiciary to ensure all processes are correct. The action is now closed.

Item 2: MoJ Update

2. MoJ confirmed that Lady Justice Cockerill has taken over as the chair of the CPRC. Her Honour Judge Kelly has also now taken over as chair of the Whiplash Sub-Committee. Officials met with HHJ Kelly in November last year and she has agreed to reform the sub-committee. It is now smaller and includes members with more direct day-to-day experience of OIC claims, to make it more suited to its current role of maintaining the system and considering smaller ‘quality of life’ changes. The chair thanked the former members for their contributions. 

3. Work is ongoing with the post-implementation review of the whiplash reforms. The call for evidence closed on 22 December last year and the responses have been analysed. MoJ aims to release the report this summer.

4. A member asked whether MoJ was considering the impact of Civil Auto File Share in OIC claims. MoJ said it was being looked at.

Item 3: Official Injury Claim (OIC) data and performance update

5. MIB provided an overview of the OIC operational data for the January to March 2026 quarter. The latest public data set was also published on 10 April 2026 and is available on the OIC website.

6. A platform update will be carried out on 28 June 2026. The system will be unavailable all day. Users have already been notified. A planned code release for September will decommission some obsolete APIs, and discussions are ongoing as to whether any other changes will be included.

7. Work continues with identifying and tackling dormancy on the portal. MIB is still talking to the top 20 OIC users about the number of claims in the “liability-rejected” stage, but not all users are taking action to close these dormant claims. A paper is to be put to the new sub-committee with proposals to tackle dormancy in this stage.

8. The number of settlements in March was elevated slightly over the previous March, and work is being done to find the reason for this.

Item 4: Member feedback

9. The Chair asked members for any general feedback they wished to put forward.

10. A member raised an issue arising from claimants obtaining medical evidence before the liability/causation decision has been received, specifically where causation is denied. Members discussed this process and whether it is optimal. If the medical report does not address the defendant’s version of events and is therefore insufficient for the compensator to make an offer, the compensator must either admit or deny causation within 20 days of disclosure of the report. If they do not, causation is automatically admitted.  Denying causation at this stage causes the claim to drop out of the portal.

11. MoJ confirmed, following its consultation on medical reports in 2023/24, it is continuing to work on changes that will prevent claimants from obtaining reports before receiving the liability decisions. Consideration of this issue is a priority for the new CPRC sub-committee.

12. A discussion was held regarding the way that offers are made on OIC for psychological injuries. If the compensator makes an offer on the tariff for whiplash plus minor psychological injury, paragraph 8.14(4A) of the RTA Small Claims Protocol currently prevents the claimant from making a counter-offer on the whiplash-only tariff.  Members also discussed how the expert preparing the initial medical report is responsible for deciding whether a further report is necessary, and whether this was optimal. The impact and potential drawbacks of these situations were discussed. The question was also asked as to whether a claim for both minor psychological injury and a separate non-tariff psychological injury could be made together. Judge Hennessy recently made a judgment on these issues.

ACTION POINT 1: MoJ will update the group if there are any developments once the CPRC sub-committee have considered the process for making offers for psychological injuries in the OIC platform.

13. This led on to a discussion about the definition of minor psychological injuries. MoJ was asked if there could be any additional guidance for MedCo about this, as some experts might not be confident enough to say that any psychological injuries are only minor. 

14. A member drew attention to the recent decision in MH Site Maintenance Services Limited and Markerstudy Insurance Services Limited v James Watson and questioned whether it had implications for OIC claims. The case concerned case management powers for claims which had begun in the CPL portal. It was suggested some of the judgment could be applicable to OIC. MoJ asked the member for a copy of this judgment.

ACTION POINT 2: Member to send the judgment to MoJ for their consideration.

Item 5: Next steps

15. The MoJ confirmed that the minutes will be circulated to members for approval before publication on gov.uk.

16. The next quarterly data release will be published in July 2026. MIB will prepare the usual data slides which will be circulated to the group. The next meeting will be scheduled for October 2026. 

Item 6: AOB

17. No other business.