Personal injury lawyers have labelled the current criminal injuries compensation scheme (CICS) “inflexible and unfair” and called for the payment cap to be abolished.

The President of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL), Allan Gore QC (pictured right), said he is seeking a meeting with the government to discuss a complete overhaul of the scheme. The CICS, which has a maximum cap of £500,000 per case, was introduced in 1996 to compensate victims of crime.

Gore said: “Before the scheme was set up, someone who suffered a brain injury because of a violent crime could expect to receive around £2 million in compensation,” he said. “Yet today, someone who suffers exactly the same injury, in exactly the same circumstances, will be awarded only a quarter of that amount through the criminal injuries scheme.”

Gore said APIL believes the scheme is completely out of line with compensation awarded through the civil courts and that its tariff bands should at least be assessed annually so that awards are kept in line with inflation.

“This money is awarded to restore some quality of life to someone injured through no fault of their own; to pay for any care they may need on a day to day basis; to help them try to regain some sort of normality,” he said. “Yet the scheme leaves many, many people under-compensated with little chance of getting their lives back.”
 

 
Allan Gore, President of APIL