Official Statistics

MOD common law compensation claims statistics 2021/22

Published 22 December 2022

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.

Summary

• Total payments by MOD for compensation claims and associated costs in Financial Year 2021/22 (not including those arising out of contract disputes) were around £135M, including claimants’ legal costs. This is exclusive of MOD legal costs and staff costs. Over the same period recoveries of over £883,000 were achieved.
• The highest value claim that was settled in 2021/22 was for a personal injury claim as a result of an overseas vehicle accident in which the claimant sustained catastrophic injuries. The total paid out on this claim (in both damages and claimants’ costs) was around £8.3M.
• The total number of new claims brought against MOD was 5,718. This represents a 10.5% increase on pre Covid-19 pandemic volumes (FY2019/20).
• 1,032 Service Personnel Employer’s liability claims were settled in 2021/22. Expenditure on Service Personnel Employer’s liability claims was £83.6M.
• 217 Civilian Employer’s Liability claims were settled in 2021/22. Expenditure on Civilian Employer’s liability claims was £23.6M.
• 274 Public Liability claims were settled in 2021/22. Expenditure on Public Liability claims was £8.7M.
• 25 Clinical Negligence claims were settled in 2021/22. Expenditure on Clinical Negligence claims was £11.4M.
• 427 Third party motor claims were settled in 2021/22. Expenditure on third party motor claims was £2.5M.
• Expenditure on structured settlements/periodic payments was around £4.1M.
• 523 claims were settled by delegated authorities in 2021/22. Expenditure for delegated authorities was £1.6M with recoveries of £45,000.
• Please note due to a change in methodology some historical figures have been revised.

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 2021/22 was 5,718. As expected this represents an increase on claims brought in 2020/21 which were significantly reduced as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the volume is 10.5% higher than in 2019/20. The largest increases are seen in the Employer’s Liability Service and Clinical Negligence claim categories. Service-related noise-induced hearing loss claims remain the most commonly claimed for condition in the Employer’s liability claims category.

Table 1: New claims, by category

	FY17/18	FY18/19	FY19/20	FY20/21	FY21/22
Total new claims brought	3,987	4,506	5,171	3,421	5,718
Employer’s Liability	1,798	2,260	3,074	1,973	3,856
Service	1,430	1,916	2,778	1,736	3,583
Noise-induced hearing loss	1,083	1,557	2,516	1,526	3,272
Non-freezing cold injury	122	160	97	63	151
Other	225	199	165	147	160
Civilian	368	344	296	237	273
Noise-induced hearing loss	64	74	50	35	28
Asbestos related	143	122	91	101	110
Other	161	148	155	101	135
Public Liability	550	580	332	342	421
Personal Injury	91	91	91	77	61
Motor	100	128	113	75	97
Low flying	61	55	49	88	71
Maritime	10	6	2	10	4
NI Legacy	228	263	37	50	121
Other	60	37	40	42	67
Clinical negligence	163	69	46	26	120
Third party Motor	1,027	1,039	987	575	818
Delegated Authorities	449	558	732	505	503
Area Claims Offices	443	545	726	454	460
Defence Infrastructure Organisation	6e	13e	6e	51e	43e

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

The format of the table has changed since the last published report and now includes a separate category for Third party motor claims. There have been some updates to historical figures, please refer to the Background Quality Report for more information.

Motor claims involve vehicle damage, property damage and/or personal injury.

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 2,498 claims were settled on all costs in 2021/22 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

	FY17/18	FY18/19	FY19/20	FY20/21	FY21/22
Total claims settled	2,755	2,777	2,767	2,530	2,498
Employer’s Liability	1,364	1,394	1,429	1,127	1,249
Service	1,135	1,133	1,193	917	1,032
Noise-induced hearing loss	803	824	998	684	844
Non-freezing cold injury	165	127	69	115	63
Other	167	182	126	118	125
Civilian	229	261	236	210	217
Noise-induced hearing loss	54	41	31	18	18
Asbestos related	91	128	112	88	95
Other	84	92	93	104	104
Public Liability	217	193	246	618	274
Personal Injury	63	52	54	51	106
Motor	69	78	123	56	71
Low flying	35	34	35	44	45
Maritime	5	7	2	7	7
Iraq Private Law	2	2	1	417	1
Afghanistan Private Law	-	1	-	13	-
NI Legacy	6	2	6	7	21
Other	37	17	25	23	23
Clinical negligence	24	25	20	23	25
Third party Motor	702	662	556	358	427
Delegated Authorities	448	503	516	404	523
Area Claims Offices	442	490	510	354	482
Defence Infrastructure Organisation	6	13	6	50	41

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

The format of the table has changed since the last published report and now includes a separate category for Third party motor claims. There have been some updates to historical figures to ensure that a claim only shows as settled in one financial year, please refer to Background Quality Report for more information.

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. The Personal Injury Discount Rate is currently minus 0.25%.

Table 3: Expenditure on claims, by category

	FY17/18	FY18/19	FY19/20	FY20/21	FY21/22
Total expenditure £/million	129.859	130.974	147.378	124.442	135.486
Expenditure by MOD Claims Unit and claims contractors	128.193	129.699	145.425	123.245	133.860
Employer’s Liability	100.373	102.488	88.633	93.996	107.176
Service	83.253	86.277	83.083	73.174	83.624
Civilian	17.119	16.211	5.550	20.822	23.552
Public Liability	7.409	12.427	28.403	17.874	8.715
Clinical negligence	13.654	6.436	21.483	5.006	11.373
Third party Motor	3.772	5.155	3.225	2.655	2.457
Structured settlement or periodic payments	2.985	3.193	3.682	3.713	4.138
Expenditure by Delegated Authorities	1.666	1.276	1.953	1.197	1.626
Area Claims Offices	1.653	1.248	1.945	1.107	1.475
Defence Infrastructure Organisation	0.013	0.028	0.008	0.090	0.151

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

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 Area Claims Offices (ACOs) overseas and the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO).
• 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. Payments made by contractors are reimbursed by MOD.
• 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 with the exception of recovery claims dealt with by Area Claims Offices (ACOs) overseas.
• 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 Corrections which would significantly alter the statistics will be corrected as soon as possible, by reissuing the publication.

Symbols

• e estimated figure based on the number of settled cases
• – 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
E-mail: 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 do not 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