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Criminal Injuries Compensation

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) received 533 complaints about their service in the financial year 2015-16. This represents 1.3% of CICA’s live caseload. 49% of complaints were closed within 10 days.

Where complaints took longer to close this was due to the number of enquiries required to fully investigate the complaint. In other cases, CICA were asked by the complainer not to close the complaint until a final decision was issued on the claim. The average time CICA took to deal with those complaints was 23.75 days.

The most common complaint received by CICA related to delays in finalising claims. CICA aims to make compensation payments as quickly as possible, however, they have a duty to the taxpayer to fully investigate claims to make sure that the applicant gets the level of compensation they deserve.

The 10 most common reasons for complaining about CICA’s service in 2015/16 were:

The total number of complaints the CICA received in each of the last five years, including those cases (a) escalated to stage 2 and (b) progressed to stage 3, are as follows:

Over half of complaints received in 2016/17 were from paid representatives. A significant portion of these were from firms of solicitors who lodged block complaints for their CICA caseload with a view to influencing the speed of the decision making process.

During the course of 2016/17 the CICA revised their operating model and increased staff numbers following an extensive recruitment exercise. They have also recently introduced measures that develop and streamline digital processes, which have reduced the claim processing time by 30 days. The new online service, which will be introduced later this financial year, will allow applicants and their representatives to view the progress of their case online. It is expected that these measures will reduce the time taken to finalise claims and lead to a reduction in complaints.

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) publishes data about the reasons claims are rejected in its annual reports at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications?departments%5B%5D=criminal-injuries-compensation-authority&publication_type=corporate-reports

The figures published in the annual reports show the number of times each rejection reason was used. For some applications there may have been more than one reason for rejection. This means that the total number of reasons for rejection is higher than the actual number of claims refused. The accurate total of rejected claims for the years specified is as follows:

Information about the time CICA has taken to reach decisions on claims over the past few years can also be found in its annual reports (see link above).

The number of full time equivalent staff employed in CICA as at 31 March 2017 was 291.2. The table below shows the number of staff CICA has employed in managerial positions over the past 5 years:

Complaints in CICA are registered by two staff within the Corporate Services team and then allocated to the relevant team to deal with the complaint in line with CICA’s complaints process. CICA teams have staff members assigned to the role of complaints champion in addition to their day to day duties. The number of complaints champions fluctuates depending on demand and staff movement. Complaints champions are responsible for handling complaints and team managers oversee the complaints process in each of their respective areas. This group regularly meets to look at improvements to our complaints handling processes. CICA does not have a record of the number of complaint champions for the last five years due to the fluctuating nature of this work.