Thomas Mitchell is not convinced by a big decline in the number of claims
The number of personal injury claims made following road traffic collisions is in sharp decline.
Data from the government’s Compensation Recovery Unit (CRU) revealed that only 63,833 claims were registered with the CRU in the fourth quarter of 2025. This is down 24 per cent on the year before. Since 2018, the picture becomes even starker, with a 58 per cent overall drop in claim numbers.
Ministers and government officials have heralded these figures as a victory. However, when you compare the data from the CRU with data from the Department for Transport’s annual report, the number of people being injured on UK roads is on the rise. Between 2020 and 2023, injuries from road traffic collisions increased by 15 per cent.
In England, 2021 saw the introduction of the so-called ‘Whiplash Reforms’, a fixed compensation tariff for minor road traffic accidents. The scheme limited compensation amounts and legal fees recoverable by lawyers representing people involved in a collision.
The reforms minimised compensation claims to a process-driven, cost-counting exercise, introducing an online portal and a “computer says no” approach to dealing with victims’ claims.
The reforms were introduced as a cloaked insurance lobby-backed attack on lawyers who represent victims of road traffic accidents. Before you start to think that whiplash claims are trumped up and people deliberately exaggerate injury symptoms to get more compensation, I am here to dispel that myth.
The only benefit of the whiplash reforms was to motor vehicle insurers. That benefit came in the form of a deficit in access to justice, which is borne out by the figures above. Since the reforms have come in, road traffic-related personal injury claims have seen that sharp drop off, but that is not because the roads are safer, it is because the reforms make it very difficult for victims to make a claim due to the nature of the reforms and how they were crafted.
In any case, with lower claims numbers, you would think that the cost of claims would come down, and in turn, insurers would pass those cost savings onto their customers.
Guess again. Insurance premiums remain high, with the average car insurance policy in the UK now £726 according to Confused.com.
In a previous article, I wrote about the government’s Motor Insurance Taskforce whose remit it was to address this issue. Instead, the taskforce’s findings were toothless, and they chose not to interfere with premium prices. The result? Insurance Industry 1, Insurance customers 0.
Thankfully, no such reforms are to be introduced up here in Scotland, but if it was mooted, there would be real opposition from those of us who represent victims.
The myth of a “compensation culture” is just that, a myth.
Insurance companies want you to believe it exists because it justifies them charging you so much just to insure your vehicle.
Any client I have had when faced with the question of “would you rather the accident had never happened or would you rather you received compensation”, the answer is always the same. They always wish the accident had never happened. And that is why compensation culture is a myth.
Thomas Mitchell – Partner
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