Compensation Claims

“Where there’s blame, there’s a claim!” Said one very famous British Advert for Personal Injury claims. In one respect it is a great way of getting money, and also a very painful and dangerous.  There are people who LITERALLY throw themselves in front of cars and drive in front of trucks to get the compensation claims.  IN fact in Russia they advise you to have a camera in your car to help you with claims of compensation. SO why bring this up here?  Well, I got a wondering, how much have local councils in Wales paid out on personal injury claims?  

So I asked all local councils:

1. How many personal injury claims they have had since 2000 (Simply because this was when the FoI act was written)
2. How many were paid out on
3. How much was spent on Personal injury claims (including legal fees and amount given to the claimant)

So here are the results:

Name	Amount tried	Amount paid out on	Amount £ Paid
Blaenau	1161	275	£3,808,851.00
Bridgend	2469	165	£5,473,414.00
Caerphilly	4666	939	£12,289,364.00
Cardiff	9472	2972	£33,618,865.91
Carmarthenshire	1953	474	£6,351,559.00
Ceredigion	124	58	£367,423.78
Conway	667	128	£1,037,543.89
Denbighshire	30	0	£0.00
Flintshire	1629	744	£8,638,157.00
Gwynedd	562	73	£456,288.00
Anglesey	852	249	£2,848,236.00
Merthyr Tydfil	2831	554	£5,687,901.00
Monmouth	624	411	£1,835,502.50
Neath Port Talbot	3943	1099	£13.279.432.77
Newport	3277	1226	£2,286,124.00
Pembroke
Powys	1135	213	£6,172,409.96
RCT
Swansea	5735	1500	£13,596,415

Torfaen	1752	474	£3,343,555.00
Vale Of Glamorgan	2303	766	£10,324,703.18
Wrexham	3156	617	£8,745,552
Total	48341	13554	£126,881,865.22

Now this list has a few things that I want to mention on it. A couple of the council's stated that they only had the information from from 2006 or 2011 (Which is fine). Also there were a number of things that popped up that I really wasn't expecting.  I also asked for a brief overview of some of the different things that people have claimed for.  Fair play they all said the roughly the same thing (Slips, falls, potholes).  

A few of them actually broke them down for me and said a few things I really DIDN'T expect. Caerphilly had a claim for compensation for Joyriding… Your guess is as good as mine over what that means. Ceredigion had one claim for £83,264.35 for tripping into a pothole and £23,294.92 for tripping over a temporary cover.  Cardiff had 1414 for potholes on pavements, but they also had the best of the best claims which was for ”Failure to educate”... So being the curious soul that I am I asked what this means.  Now I am going to just cut and paste the answer to avoid and misrepresentation:

“Generally, these are claims relating to failure to identify that the claimant had dyslexia and they suffered psychologically as a result”

Fair enough.  So why did I ask this? Because this money is something that comes out of your pockets.  It is money that we have paid that is being given for things that the council have “Failed upon”.  Its also something that people think is a good way of making money.  Looking at the stats basically shows than just under three quarters of all claims are failures, but they still cost you.  

Fair enough to give compensation to people for failure in Health and safety, but some of these things were probably not the whole story…

PS I also asked this this question to Brighton and Hove Council too.  Their response is here.