The body charged with keeping regulation of the claims management sector out of government hands has called on solicitors to join its ranks, after it admitted that its efforts might fail without more support.

The Claims Standards Council (CSC) says it will give up and let the government step in if it does not receive greater backing from the industry; the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) has given the sector until the end of 2005 to get its house in order.


The CSC is hoping to rally its troops at a make-or-break conference at the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham next week. It is looking for a 'critical mass' of supporters that will put their money where their mouths are by committing to an annual membership fee.


CSC chief executive Anthony Burns-Howell said: 'The vast majority of people have thus far been doing it in a voluntary capacity. It is time to draw the line in the sand on this.'



He added: 'We would welcome more lawyer members, and we feel it would increase the speed with which abuses of the system are resolved if they could only take cases that are regulated by [an organisation] like the CSC.'


A spokesman added that one way forward would be for the Law Society to ban solicitors from accepting accident cases from companies that are not accredited by the CSC.


A Law Society spokesman said: '[We] believe effective regulation of the claims management industry is urgently required. We would give careful consideration to any proposal that solicitors should take business from claims managers only if they are subject to effective regulation.'


Neil Kinsella, managing partner of national firm Russell Jones & Walker - a CSC member which bought up the rights to run the Claims Direct operation in 2003 - agreed that solicitors could help deal with a currently 'fragmented' claims sector. He said the CSC was in a position to regulate claims from beginning to end, getting rid of spurious cases and eliminating any unnecessary use of lawyers.


'People in this industry need to get together to act more responsibly and ensure that people can bring genuine claims and get genuine payouts at a reasonable cost,' he urged.


But Martin Cockx, a partner in Manchester claimant firm Amelans, said he would be pleased if the CSC failed and the government stepped in. 'Accident management companies are parasites,' he argued. 'If they all went out of business tomorrow, I would go home and open a bottle of champagne.'


A DCA spokeswoman said the CSC had done well in developing its consumer code of practice, but stressed it still only had one last shot at maintaining self-regulation. 'All claims management companies need to understand they must work towards achieving the standards set out in the code,' she warned.


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