Motor injury claims fall to lowest level on record

The number of RTA personal injury claims has fallen dramatically in the past year to continue the trend of a long-term decline.

Figures obtained by the claimant-facing Association of Consumer Support Organisations (ACSO) following a freedom of information request show that motor injury claims in the fourth quarter of 2025 fell by 24% to 63,833. This was comfortably the lowest quarterly figures on record.

On an annual basis, motor claims reduced by 14% to 282,428 while the total number of personal injury claims fell by 12% to 413,323.

As a comparison, in 2018 there were 876,562 claims in total, of which 667,377 were motor claims, meaning a 53% fall in all claims and a 58% fall in motor.

The figures were obtained from the Compensation Recovery Unit, which is administered by the Department for Work and Pensions and considered a trustworthy source for claims numbers.

The fall is due to several factors. It is now more than seven years since the Civil Liability Act received royal assent and almost five years since the introduction of an online portal for handling lower-value RTA claims. This came with a new tariff for claims which significantly reduced the level of compensation for different categories of injuries.

The consequence of this has been a contraction of the personal injury market, with a number of firms closing their PI books and leaving just a handful of firms dominating the sector.

Matthew Maxwell Scott, executive director of ACSO, said that while roads have not got any safer in recent years, the process for making a claim has become much more difficult.

‘Ministers and officials may claim this as a victory, but unless and until the considerable savings being made are being passed on to motorists through materially lower insurance premiums, it’s a win for insurers’ shareholders and them alone,’ he said.

‘The latest data also show that talk of a "compensation culture" is increasingly misplaced, with many injured people struggling to get the representation they need as a result of higher small claims limits and fixed costs regimes that make it very challenging for lawyers to run such cases.’

The government is currently reviewing the whiplash reform programme, including the statutory definition of a whiplash injury, the fixed tariff of damages for whiplash injuries where the duration of the injury (or injuries) does not exceed two years, and the ban on seeking or offering to settle a whiplash claim without medical evidence.

The review will also consider the supporting secondary legislative change to increase the small claims track limit from £1,000 to £5,000 for road traffic accident-related personal injury claims.

Meanwhile, personal injury lawyers have said that ‘obvious problems’ are emerging from the 2023 extension to the fixed recoverable costs regime, which applied FRC to most civil claims valued up to £100,000 which are allocated to the new intermediate track.

John McQuater, executive committee member of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, said there is a lack of clarity around allocation and assignment to a complexity band, particularly where the parties are exploring settlement before issue of proceedings. ‘The whole point of FRCs is so the legal costs of a case can be predicable and assessed accurately. But with the uncertainty brought by the reforms, it can be hugely difficult for claimant lawyers to fully inform injured people, at the outset, about how costs will be dealt with,’ added McQuater.

The Civil Procedure Rule Committee and Ministry of Justice are currently reviewing the effect of the fixed costs extension.