The MoJ RTA PI claims scheme, introduced on 30 April, provides fixed stages and costs for claims valued between £1,000 and £10,000 – the vast majority.

The process is effected via the new MOJ electronic portal in three stages, with tight timescales:

(1) The claimant solicitor completes the claim notification form and sends it to the insurer who may admit or deny liability.

(2) If liability is admitted, the claimant obtains a medical report and the process continues with offers and negotiation of a settlement to a strict timetable.

(3) Where the parties cannot agree a settlement, an application is made to court for a quantum hearing.

Neil Worrall of Camps Solicitors comments.

A great deal has been written about the impact of the new process and its accompanying IT portal. But what about the impact on the day-to-day business of a law firm, especially one where a significant proportion of the caseload falls into the £1,000 to £10,000 bracket specified by the new process? I asked my solicitor and IT support colleagues for their impressions.

Lynda Savarizadeh, solicitor: “Leading the training programme for the new process means I have had to delve deep into its workings to answer the myriad of questions from other solicitors and fee earning staff. Even with several staff working to prepare the procedural side, the amount of work and the tight deadlines has made me wonder how smaller firms are coping with the burden of adjusting to the new process.

The three-stage process, with an emphasis on fixed recoverable costs at the end of Stage 3 should make for more predictable cash flow for firms, as payments will be received at regular intervals throughout the claim process, with £400 costs at the end of stage one, £800 if the claim goes through to stage two and either £250 or £500 if the claim proceeds to stage 3, depending on whether the final hearing is on paper or an oral hearing. The issue for me with the new process is the tight deadlines that have to be adhered to by both solicitors and insurance companies in order to avoid the claim falling back to the old process.

To my mind, the 15 day limits at many points in the process, such as responding to the claim notification form in stage 1 or deciding whether to accept the claimant’s offer or make a counter offer in stage 2 will be key to the success or failure of the new approach. If either side consistently fails to meet this deadline then claims will fall back to the current process, which would negate any of the advantages of the new system.

At the risk of sounding non-committal, although I feel that our firm is ready for the challenge of the new process, it is my view that we will have to wait and see if the promises of a streamlined, more efficient claims process are delivered upon.”

Vicki Kinsella and Andy Williams, applications developers comment: “Working as part of the new claims project group here, we have experienced at first hand the frustrations with the new portal and the web browser for the claims process. We have worked to ensure that our own case management system will integrate with the claims portal using the application-to-application approach, rather than using the web browser.

Unfortunately, we have encountered several problems with the new portal in as much as transfer of data is currently limited to manual upload only, which creates massive overheads for the solicitors and their support staff as they will have to re-enter data by hand. The browser has crashed multiple times during our testing, which doesn’t bode well for 30th April.

Despite reassurances from IDSL that the system will be ready on time, we aren’t convinced. Nobody yet knows whether the portal will work as promised.”

There are undoubtedly benefits in bringing a streamlined approach to low value RTA claims that should see cases settled far more quickly than at present. But there are also problems, with tight deadlines possibly serving to negate the benefits – especially if large numbers of claims fall back to the current process if deadlines are not met.

The main issue, from the people I have spoken to, definitely seems to be the readiness of the computer systems.

Neil Worrall is a marketing assistant for online and print marketing at Camps Solicitors, a law firm specialising in RTA and PI claims.

Email neil.worrall@camplaw.co.uk.