Official Statistics

MOD Common Law Compensation Claims statistics 2019/20

Published 10 December 2020

This bulletin relates to claims brought against the Ministry of Defence for compensation at common law (other than those arising out of contract disputes). These are dealt with by the Claims Unit within the Department’s Directorate of Judicial Engagement Policy (DJEP), by contractors operating in accordance with instructions provided by the Claims Unit, or by delegated authorities. These statistics do not include compensation awarded under the MOD’s no fault schemes - the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme and its predecessor the War Pension Scheme

Key Points

• Total payments by MOD for compensation claims and associated costs in Financial Year 2019/20 (not including those arising out of contract disputes) were around £147M, including claimants’ legal costs. This is exclusive of MOD legal costs and staff costs. Over the same period recoveries of close to £1.5M were achieved.
• The highest value claim that was settled in 2019/20 was for a clinical negligence claim. The total paid out on this claim (in both damages and claimants’ costs) was around £12M.
• The total number of new claims brought against MOD was 5,192. This represents an overall increase of 8.6% on claims brought in 2018/19.
• 1,237 Service Personnel Employer’s liability claims were settled in 2019/20. In-year expenditure on Service Personnel Employer’s liability claims was £83.1M.
• 202 Civilian Employer’s Liability claims were settled in 2019/20. In-year expenditure on Civilian Employer’s liability claims was £5.6M.
• 785 Public Liability claims were settled in 2019/20, of which 544 were third party motor claims. In-year expenditure on Public Liability claims was £31.7M, of which £3.4M was accounted for by third party motor claims.
• 19 Clinical Negligence claims were settled in 2019/20. In-year expenditure on Clinical Negligence claims was £21.5M.
• The in-year expenditure on structured settlements/periodic payments was around £3.7M.
• 527 claims were settled by delegated authorities in 2019/20. The in/year expenditure for delegated authorities was £2M with recoveries in excess of £75,000.

Point of contact: Deputy Head of Common Law Claims and Policy
Telephone: 0207 218 1538
Further information: SPODJEP-ClaimsGeneral@mod.gov.uk

Background Quality Report: Background Quality Report

Introduction

When compensation claims are received they are considered on the basis of whether or not the Ministry of Defence has a legal liability to pay compensation. A payment of compensation in circumstances where the Department does not consider that a court would find it liable would count as an ex gratia payment; the Department is not empowered to make such payments without Treasury authorisation with the exception of claims arising from low flying. Treasury approval is not frequently sought or given.

The amount of compensation paid is determined by common law principles which broadly take account, as appropriate, of such factors as an individual’s pain and suffering, degree of injury, property losses, past and future financial losses and level of care required. Advice is sought where necessary from the Government Legal Department, and a range of specialist Personal Injury Law firms for cases brought in England and Wales; the Crown Solicitor in Northern Ireland; and Morton Fraser Solicitors, the Department’s legal adviser in Scotland. Counsel are also consulted on high profile or complex cases or where a point of law needs to be explored. The majority of cases are settled through negotiation, saving the parties the additional costs of a court appearance. This bulletin does not distinguish between compensation ordered by a court and compensation paid pursuant to a negotiated settlement.

Section 1 Common law compensation claims made against the MOD

The total number of new claims brought against MOD in 2019/20 was 5,192. This represents an overall increase of 8.6% on claims brought in 2018/19. The number of Employer’s liability claims for Service personnel has increased which is largely as a result of an increase in Service-related noise-induced hearing loss claims which remains the most commonly claimed for condition in the Employer’s liability claims category.

Table 1: New claims, by category

	FY15/16	FY16/17	FY17/18	FY18/19	FY19/20
Total new claims brought	4,844	4,390	3,754	4,783	5,192
Public Liability	1,934	1,754	1,544	1,633	1,317
Motor	1,629	1,494	1,092	1,181	1,099
Personal injury	250	184	91	107	86
Property/vehicle damage	1,363	1,287	986	1,064	1,005
Vehicle overseas	16	23	15	10	8
Other Public Liability	305	260	452	452	218
Personal Injury	154	92	93	91	91
Low flying	74	101	61	55	49
Maritime	17	9	10	6	1
Iraq Private Law	12	1	-	1	-
NI Legacy	3	2	228	263	37
Other	45	55	60	36	40
Employer’s Liability	2,093	1,764	1,598	2,523	3,097
Service	1,613	1,388	1,320	2,185	2,796
Noise-induced hearing loss	1,037	914	958	1,810	2,519
Non-freezing cold injury	206	117	101	158	98
Other	370	357	261	217	179
Civilian	480	376	278	338	301
Noise-induced hearing loss	185	106	48	72	48
Asbestos related	139	94	112	127	91
Other	156	176	118	139	162
Clinical negligence	92	255	163	69	46
Delegated Authorities	725	617	449	558	732
Area Claims Offices	714	608	443	545	726
Defence Infrastructure Organisation	11e	9e	6e	13e	6e

Source: Directorate of Judicial Engagement Policy Common Law Claims & Policy

The majority of motor claims will be third party motor liability claims.

The Other category within Other Public Liability will include for example, property damage claims which usually come from personnel working and living in service accommodation who have had their belongings damaged by poor maintenance of their accommodation or infrastructure.

Section 2 Settled Common law compensation claims notified

In this Section, the term settled relates to claims where damages have been awarded to the claimant and damages and associated legal costs have been paid. In total 2,770 claims were settled on all costs in 2019/20 either out of Court or by Court verdict. The financial year in which settlement is recorded is not necessarily the year in which the damages were paid. This category does not include any claims which were discontinued, struck out by the Courts, or repudiated by the Claims Unit.

Table 2: Settled claims, by category

	FY15/16	FY16/17	FY17/18	FY18/19	FY19/20
Total claims settled	3,632	3,421	2,891	2,720	2,770
Public Liability	1,624	1,095	962	757	785
Motor	1,439	914	819	648	665
Personal injury	249	185	144	142	91
Property/ vehicle damage	1,179	721	666	500	569
Vehicle overseas	11	8	9	6	5
Other Public Liability	185	181	143	109	120
Personal Injury	72	82	60	50	53
Low flying	48	47	34	32	35
Maritime	7	6	5	6	2
Iraq Private Law	-	-	-	3	1
NI Legacy	32	15	6	2	4
Other	26	31	38	16	25
Employer’s Liability	1,312	1,554	1,428	1,400	1,439
Service	1,060	1,317	1,178	1,137	1,237
Noise-induced hearing loss	808	931	803	812	991
Non-freezing cold injury	62	157	167	131	70
Other	190	229	208	194	176
Civilian	252	237	250	263	202
Noise-induced hearing loss	64	67	61	36	32
Asbestos related	94	87	101	102	89
Other	94	83	88	125	81
Clinical negligence	20	27	22	24	19
Delegated Authorities	676	745	479	539	527
Area Claims Offices	665	736	473	526	521
Defence Infrastructure Organisation	11	9	6	13	6

Source: Directorate of Judicial Engagement Policy Common Law Claims & Policy

Caveat: It is possible that the same claim may be shown as settled in more than one financial year within the published figures, refer to Background Quality Report for more information.

The majority of motor claims will be third party motor liability claims.

The Other category within Other Public Liability will include for example, property damage claims which usually come from personnel working and living in service accommodation who have had their belongings damaged by poor maintenance of their accommodation or infrastructure.

Cost of compensation claims notified

This table includes damages and other costs, such as claimants’ legal costs. It does not include MOD’s own legal costs which will comprise of fees to MOD instructed lawyers and disbursements such as Counsel fees and expert fees as well as some own costs for MOD’s current contractor for non-litigated cases. Expenditure may include interim payments for active claims as well as final payments for settled claims. On 15 July 2019, the Government announced a change to the calculation of personal injury compensation. From 5 August 2019, the Personal Injury Discount Rate applied was raised from minus 0.75% to minus 0.25%.

Table 3: In-year expenditure on claims, by category

	FY15/16	FY16/17	FY17/18	FY18/19	FY19/20
Total in-year expenditure £/million	88.928	101.294	129.859	130.974	147.378
In-year expenditure by MOD Claims Unit and claims contractors	87.841	99.762	128.193	129.699	145.425
Public Liability	12.654	12.479	11.182	17.582	31.672
Employer’s Liability	66.284	76.621	100.373	102.488	88.633
Service	51.642	60.012	83.253	86.277	83.083
Civilian	14.642	16.609	17.119	16.211	5.550
Clinical negligence	6.059	7.683	13.654	6.436	21.483
In-year structured settlement or periodic payments	2.845	2.978	2.985	3.193	3.682
In-year expenditure by Delegated Authorities	1.086	1.533	1.666	1.276	1.953
Area Claims Offices	1.057	1.519	1.653	1.248	1.945
ACO Afghanistan	0.002	~	~	~	0.001
ACO North West Europe	0.460	0.776	1.063	0.502	1.145
ACO Cyprus	0.595	0.743	0.587	0.742	0.793
ACO South Atlantic Islands	-	-	0.002	0.003	0.007
Defence Infrastructure Organisation	0.029	0.013	0.013	0.028	0.008

Source: Directorate of Judicial Engagement Policy Common Law Claims & Policy

Public liability claims include motor third party claims at a cost of £3.4M.

Glossary

• Civilian refers to all MOD civilian employees including members of the Ministry of Defence Guard Service (MGS) and Ministry of Defence Police (MDP) as well as cadets.
• Delegated authorities include the overseas Area Claims Offices (ACOs) and the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO).
• In-year expenditure inclusive of damages and other costs such as claimant’s legal costs. It does not include MOD legal costs which will comprise of fees to MOD instructed lawyers and disbursements such as Counsel fees and expert fees as well as some own costs for MOD’s current contractor for non-litigated cases. Expenditure may include interim payments for active claims as well as final payments for settled claims.
• Recoveries comprise of all recoveries including recovery claims. Numbers of recovery claims such as Uninsured loss recovery in respect of damage to MOD vehicles caused by third party vehicles are not included in this report.
• Settled claim relates to a claim where damages have been awarded to the claimant and damages and all associated legal costs have been paid.

Further Information

Revisions

There are no regular planned revisions of this Bulletin. Any substantial changes which are discovered to be necessary will be made to the on-line version of the Bulletin. Corrections to the published statistics will be made if errors are found, or if figures change as a result of improvements to methodology or changes to definitions. When making corrections, we will follow the Ministry of Defence Statistics, revisions and corrections policy All corrected figures will be identified by the symbol “r”. Corrections which would have a significant impact on the utility of the statistics will be corrected as soon as possible, by reissuing the publication.

Symbols

• e estimated figure based on the number of settled cases
• r revised figure
• – zero
• ~ £500 or less

Contact us

Claims Point of Contact – Deputy Head of Common Law Claims and Policy, Telephone: 0207 218 1538

E-mail: SPODJEP-ClaimsGeneral@mod.gov.uk

Statistical Point of Contact – Head of Defence Statistics (Tri-Service),
Telephone: 0207 807 8896

Email: Analysis-Publications@mod.gov.uk

If you require information which is not available within this or other available publications, you may wish to submit a Request for Information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to the Ministry of Defence. If you wish to correspond by email, our postal address is:

Directorate of Judicial Engagement Policy – Common Law Claims and Policy Ministry of Defence, Main Building
Floor 3 Zone I
Whitehall
London
SW1A 2HB

For general MOD enquiries, please call: 020 7218 9000