Dr Nicholas Bevan

Dr Nicholas Bevan
www.nicholasbevan.com

Sunday 19 May 2019

APIL Conference


Last week I attended the annual conference of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, of which I am a senior fellow.

It was a pleasure to join the panel to discuss ‘The Impact of Brexit’ with Katherine Deal QC of 3 Hare Court; Sarah Crowther QC of Outer Temple Chambers; Chris Deacon from Stewarts solicitors; Simon Davis, vice president of the Law Society, and Dominic Clayden the new CEO at the Motor Insurers’ Bureau.

Prior to this, Dominic Clayden presented an update on the latest developments within the MIB and the new IT platform it is developing to deal with personal injury claims by unrepresented members of the public.  He revealed that the insurance industry is investing £15m in this new online portal.  This online claims platform will be linked to a call centre.

Although much is still unknown about its precise workings, the MIB has a target of April 2020 for the system to go live.  The new portal’s launch is intended to coincide with the implementation of new reduced scale tariffs on the damages paid for soft tissue injuries sustained in road traffic accident claims, under the Civil Liability Act 2018. It is also intended to facilitate claims by litigants in person once the government’s extends the scope of the small claims track for motor claims valued up to £5,000, also planned for April 2020.

This new portal and these reforms will effectively remove, on some estimates, at least half of the present volume of road traffic accident claims from the current portal where solicitor’s receive modest levels of fixed costs from the insurers of an at-fault party. This will effectively divert a substantial quantity of routine low value civil liability litigation from solicitors practices.  Many view this as the final turn of the screw for the bulk personal injury claims sector that began with the civil justice reforms in 2013.

Listening in to a seminar that updated the membership on the progress being made on developing the new claims portal, I was reminded of the scene from Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ where Michael Palin, solicitously instructs each participant: ‘Straight out; line up on the left, one cross each…’

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