New Process for RTA Accident Claims

New system for solicitors and insurance companies to handle road accident claims

Although you might not have read about it in the papers, or seen much news coverage about it on the TV – after all it was election week – there was a big change this week to the way road accident compensation claims for less than £10,000 are dealt with by law firms and insurance companies. This big change was part of reforms announced in September 2009 by the Ministry of Justice to streamline the compensation claims system for low-value road accident compensation claims to make the whole process faster and easier to understand.

Under the new system, claims made by people who have been injured in a road traffic accident and who are claiming less than £10,000 will be dealt with differently to all other claims. These “low value RTA claims” as they are known, will be dealt with in a three-stage process by solicitors and insurance companies, which if it is successful, should cut the average length of time taken to settle claims by a large amount.

The first stage of the new process involves a claims notification form, which contains details of the accident, being sent from a solicitor to an insurance company. After the insurance company receives this form, they have 15 days to investigate the claim and then respond back to the solicitor. The next stage of the process involves obtaining medical evidence of the client’s injuries, which will only happen once the insurance company has admitted that their client was responsible for the accident. After a medical report has been obtained and both sides agree that it is accurate, then the claimant’s solicitor completes another set of paperwork, known as a settlement pack. This has to be done within 15 days of the medical report being agreed upon.

Following this, there is then a set period for negotiating offers of compensation made by the insurance company. If both sides cannot agree on the level of compensation that the victim should receive, then the claim will proceed to the third stage of the process, where the claim will go to court where a judge will decide on the amount of compensation to be paid.

So there you go, very dry stuff really, but it should mean that road accident claimants get their compensation much more quickly than at present. This of course relies on both sides sticking to the strict time limits, because any delays to the process will see the claim “fall back” to the older, more time-consuming process. Whether the system is extended to other types of claims is obviously going to depend on how successful it is at cutting the time taken to settle claims.

RTA claims process compensation claims

So if you have been injured in a car accident where you received moderate injuries, then it is quite likely that your claim will follow the new process. At Camps Solicitors, our legal staff have been preparing for several months to ensure that, come the launch of the new process, we would be ready.