Whiplash: Government review
The number of personal injury claims from road traffic accidents has fallen to an all-time low, with a knock-on effect on the Official Injury Claim (OIC) portal.
The latest data from the government’s Compensation Recovery Unit (CRU) showed there were only 63,833 motor claims registered in the fourth quarter of 2025, comfortably the lowest quarterly figures on record.
This represents a fall of 24% compared to the same period in 2024, and 65% compared to 2019.
On a year-on-year basis, motor claims were down 14% to 282,428 in 2025, representing most of the 12% fall in all types of personal injury claim to 413,323.
According to the CRU data, obtained by the Association of Consumer Support Organisations (ACSO) following a Freedom of Information request, in 2019 there were 843,426 claims in total, of which 653,983 were motor claims.
Meanwhile, the latest OIC figures showed that 241,913 claims were started in the portal in 2025. The number peaked in 2022, the first full year of the OIC’s operation, at 298,640 and has been on the decline since.
Matthew Maxwell Scott, executive director of ACSO, said: “While our roads have not become notably safer places in recent years, it has become far harder for people to make a claim when they are injured on them, especially as a result of the Ministry of Justice’s whiplash reforms.
“Ministers and officials may claim this as a victory, but unless and until the considerable savings being made are being passed on to motorists through materially lower insurance premiums, it’s a win for insurers’ shareholders and them alone.”
Figures from HM Treasury [1] last year found that the reforms saved policyholders £31 in premiums in the first three years of their operation – however, in the run-up, the Ministry of Justice said they would save £35 a year.
Mr Maxwell Scott added: “The gulf between what was promised and what’s being delivered should have received far greater attention from the government’s motor insurance taskforce, but instead this was largely a damp squib [2].
“We must hope the ongoing review of the whiplash reforms highlights this discrepancy.”
The CRU figures showed too how employer’s liability claims have halved since Covid – from 86,996 in 2019 to 44,129 in 2025 – while public liability claims have fallen 23% to 59,509.
Responding to the Ministry of Justice’s call for evidence [3] to inform its review of the whiplash reform programme, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers said the changes have “utterly failed the general public [4] and victims of negligence”.