Road Traffic Accident Claims – Corries Five Point Response to Changes in the law

There is a lot of media coverage about Road traffic accident claims at the moment.

The government has said it wants to raise the small claims limit in accordance with the insurance industry wishes. The new small claim limit would be £5000. This would wipe out access to justice to millions of people each year.

The proposed changes would massively rewrite the way in which the legal system for compensation has been working for many years.

Corries Response

Corries Road Traffic Accident (RTA) team handle thousands of claims every year. We have provided input to the government and various professional bodies responses to these proposed changes.

Our RTA claims Managers Richard Walton and Lee Jones have considered the proposed changes. Both Richard and Lee understand the focus on changing how compensation claims are dealt with. However the wholescale and wide ranging planned changes the insurance industry through the government seek to make are neither sensible nor viable.

Corries Five Point Response to the changes in the law are as follows:-

1. Corries accept that there should be a slight increase to the Small Claims Limit. We propose to adopt the “Access to Justice “A2J” Alternative Claims Framework. This would mean that the limit be increased by CPI from the date of the last increase in 1999 and then indexed for the future
2. That insurance companies reduce the time to process road traffic accident claims through its portal to 12 months
3. There be a total ban on pre-medical report offers.  This is a practice advanced by the insurance industry and potentially denies access to claimants for proper sums in compensation.
4. To work together to reduce the already modest and shrinking fraud cases.  In doing so we invite the insurance industry to be as open as transparent as we are in seeking and scrutinising our clients before claims are advanced.
5. There be a ban on cold calling with proper enforcement with government backing.

Comment

Richard Walton commented

“The government, prompted by the insurance industry, is making a badly aimed attack on people’s rights. This will affect compensation for millions of people each year. Instead they should concentrate on the tiny number of bad practices that are out there. The insurers use inflated or unsupported fraud figures. They are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.  Corries’ response is a sensible and open way for the costs to come down, for damages to properly be paid and to update in the law to reflect modern claims.

Taking measures to stop cold callers will help the public and re assure the legal and insurance industry that they can keep a close eye on unsavoury practices”

 

Fellow manager Lee Jones added

“We would welcome any reasonable strategy to rule out fraud from compensation claims. We are vigilant and have to constantly crosscheck our clients and documents which are provided by them.  Many of the problems relating to claims companies have come from the insurance industry selling client information. 

Also, if they acted more sensibly then they would put their own house into order and this too would reduce costs.”

 

If you have been affected by a Road Traffic Accident in the last three years then contact our specialist teams on 0800 655 6550