Whiplash: Repair costs should be the target of action
The whiplash reforms have “utterly failed the general public and victims of negligence” and there is no evidence for insurers’ arguments to extend them, claimant lawyers have told the government.
While motor insurers have saved £2.2bn on injury claims and seen the cost of these claims fall by 19%, data from the Office for National Statistics showed that car insurance premiums have actually increased by 69% since the reforms came in, according to the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL).
APIL was responding to the Ministry of Justice’s call for evidence [1] to inform its review of the whiplash reform programme, including operation of the Official Injury Claim (OIC) portal.
It identified the rising costs of repair as driving higher claims costs both before the Civil Liability Act 2018 and even more so after – in the third quarter of this year, injury claims made up 23% of all car insurance claim costs, while repair claims represented 64%.
APIL commissioned two opinion polls from Opinium – one of 1,724 adults in England and Wales and one of 300 people who had suffered an injury in a car collision that was someone else’s fault and which affected them for up to two years.
More than half (55%) of people thought compensation for injuries should be calculated on a case-by-case basis, while only 12% backed the tariff used in the OIC.
Only 5% of respondents considered the typical tariff-based compensation of £750 to be fair for injuries captured by the reforms.
The polling showed that injured people experienced wide-ranging impacts, which APIL said a fixed tariff could not properly account for.
“For example, 51% of these people felt more anxious or were fearful about driving again, while 43% had to take sick leave or reduce their hours at work.” Only 9% said they were able to carry out their day-to-day activities as normal.
APIL said: “The types of injuries targeted by the ‘whiplash reforms’ are often presented by insurers as minor or trivial. However, APIL’s research clearly shows these injuries are not minor or trivial to the people who suffer them.”
Two-thirds considered their injuries to be more than a ‘minor inconvenience’.
The organisation took aim at the OIC, noting that only 11% of claimants were unrepresented, a figure it said included people had assistance from the at-fault insurer.
Further, for every 10 claims submitted by those without representation, more than six calls are made to the OIC’s support centre. “This astonishingly high number of calls shows just how much the system is not the easy-to-use process promised.”
The polling showed the claims process was now more stressful – 48% of claimants who were injured before the reforms found it very stressful, compared to 71% who used the OIC.
If they did not have legal advice, just 27% of people would trust the at-fault insurer to offer them a fair amount of compensation.
Of those who used a lawyer to claim through the OIC, 55% say they would have never considered claiming if they had not had this support.
Six in 10 adults also thought the at-fault insurer should cover successful claimants’ legal costs.
Perhaps most damning of all was that fewer than half of those with an injury affected by the reforms were aware of the OIC.
APIL pointed out all that while the number of claims has fallen by 34% since the start of the decade, the number of reported road injuries was up by 11%.
It added that there was no factual basis for insurers’ arguments that, with other types of injuries being claimed, the whiplash tariff should be extended to them, and that the £5,000 small claims limit should be lifted too.
“In reality, APIL’s analysis of OIC data shows that the number of claims with a non-tariff element fell by 7% between 2022 and 2024…
“If more claims were exceeding the limit, there would be an increase in claims entering the pre-OIC Claims Portal, which deals with claims just above the small claims limit. This has not occurred.
“In actual fact, based on data for the year to date, 2025 is likely to see a record low number of RTA claims enter the pre-OIC Claims Portal.”
Putting forward changes that would improve the system, APIL called for claimants to be able to recover disbursements, a higher cap on recoverable fees for second medical reports (currently £750), and removing split trials for liability and quantum for OIC claims, as well as increased use of telephone and virtual hearings.
APIL chief executive Mike Benner said: “The reforms have had a devastating impact on access to justice for injured victims of negligence and have failed to reduce the cost of motor premiums…
“If the government is serious about reducing costs to policyholders there must be a review of repair and hire costs. The work proposed by the motor insurance taskforce [2] on repair and hire costs should be monitored to ensure that it tackles the excessive costs in these areas.
“Any further reform to the PI sector would be unwarranted, misinformed, and would exacerbate the existing unfairness for injured people since 2021.”