Official Statistics

MOD common law compensation claims statistics 2022/23

Updated 26 February 2024

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 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 2022/23 (not including those arising out of contract disputes) were around £160M, including claimants’ legal costs. This is exclusive of MOD legal costs and staff costs.

• The highest value claim that was settled in 2022/23 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 6,897. This represents a 20.7% increase on FY2021/22.

• 1,940 Service Personnel Employer’s liability claims were settled in 2022/23. Expenditure on Service Personnel Employer’s liability claims was £107.1M.

• 185 Civilian Employer’s Liability claims were settled in 2022/23.  Expenditure on Civilian Employer’s liability claims was £20.3M.

• 132 Public Liability claims were settled in 2022/23.  Expenditure on Public Liability claims was £11.8M.

• 21 Clinical Negligence claims were settled in 2022/23. Expenditure on Clinical Negligence claims was £13.3M.

• 260 Third party motor claims were settled in 2022/23.  Expenditure on third party motor claims was £2M.

• Expenditure on structured settlements/periodic payments was around £4.5M.

• 595 claims were settled by delegated authorities in 2022/23. Expenditure for delegated authorities was £1.1M.

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’s Office for cases brought in Northern Ireland; and Morton Fraser MacRoberts Solicitors for cases brought in Scotland. Counsel are also consulted on high profile or complex cases or where a point of law needs to be explored. In line with Civil procedural rules the majority of cases are settled through negotiation. However, 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 2022/23 was 6,897. This represents an increase on claims brought in 2021/22 with the largest increase seen in Service Personnel Employer’s Liability claims. 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

	FY18/19	FY19/20	FY20/21	FY21/22	FY22/23
Total new claims brought	4,500	5,159	3,414	5,712	6,897
Employer’s Liability	2,265	3,062	1,964	3,846	5,158
Service	1,924	2,769	1,730	3,576	4,959
Noise-induced hearing loss	1,562	2,505	1,522	3,269	4,571
Non-freezing cold injury	161	97	63	151	228
Other	201	167	145	156	160
Civilian	341	293	234	270	199
Noise-induced hearing loss	73	48	33	28	28
Asbestos related	121	91	102	110	81
Other	147	154	99	132	90
Public Liability	577	330	340	421	335
Personal Injury	91	91	77	76	89
Motor	128	113	75	96	77
Low flying	55	49	86	71	34
Maritime	6	2	9	4	5
NI Legacy	260	35	49	121	79
Other	37	40	44	53	51
Clinical negligence	66	46	27	119	38
Third party Motor	1,034	989	578	823	904
Delegated Authorities	558	732	505	503	462
Area Claims Offices	545	726	454	460	418
Defence Infrastructure Organisation	13e	6e	51e	43e	44e

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

There have been some updates to historical figures, please refer to the Background Quality Report for more information.

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 3,133 claims were settled in 2022/23 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

	FY18/19	FY19/20	FY20/21	FY21/22	FY22/23
Total claims settled	2,777	2,762	2,512	2,488	3,133
Employer’s Liability	1,395	1,428	1,116	1,247	2,125
Service	1,131	1,193	906	1,032	1,940
Noise-induced hearing loss	825	999	685	846	1,706
Non-freezing cold injury	127	69	115	63	95
Other	179	125	106	123	139
Civilian	264	235	210	215	185
Noise-induced hearing loss	40	30	17	17	16
Asbestos related	130	112	88	95	87
Other	94	93	105	103	82
Public Liability	194	246	613	265	132
Personal Injury	54	54	48	99	52
Motor	76	123	55	70	35
Low flying	34	35	44	45	23
Maritime	7	2	7	6	1
Iraq Private Law	2	1	417	1	1
Afghanistan Private Law	1	-	13	-	-
NI Legacy	2	6	7	21	9
Other	18	25	22	23	11
Clinical negligence	24	17	23	23	21
Third party Motor	661	555	356	430	260
Delegated Authorities	503	516	404	523	595
Area Claims Offices	490	510	354	482	551
Defence Infrastructure Organisation	13	6	50	41	44

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

There have been some updates to historical figures, please refer to Background Quality Report for more information.

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% in England and Wales, minus 0.75% in Scotland and minus 1.5% in Northern Ireland.

Table 3: Expenditure on claims, by category

	FY18/19	FY19/20	FY20/21	FY21/22	FY22/23
Total expenditure £/million	131.299	147.378	124.442	135.481	160.135
Expenditure by MOD Claims Unit and claims contractors	130.023	145.425	123.245	133.855	159.017
Employer’s Liability	102.811	88.633	93.996	107.176	127.446
Service	86.632	83.083	73.174	83.624	107.143
Civilian	16.179	5.550	20.822	23.552	20.303
Public Liability	12.427	28.403	17.874	8.715	11.774
Clinical negligence	6.436	21.483	5.006	11.373	13.279
Third party Motor	5.156	3.225	2.655	2.452	2.039
Structured settlement or periodic payments	3.193	3.682	3.713	4.138	4.478
Expenditure by Delegated Authorities	1.276	1.953	1.197	1.626	1.118
Area Claims Offices	1.248	1.945	1.107	1.475	1.070
Defence Infrastructure Organisation	0.028	0.008	0.090	0.151	0.048

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.

• 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 – Head of Common Law Claims and Policy,

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

Statistical Point of Contact: Head of Defence Statistics (Tri-Service)

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