Thank you for your email received on 24 February 2026, in which you made a request for access to certain information which may be held by the Infected Blood Compensation Authority.
As you may be aware, the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Infected Blood Compensation Authority), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and we provide a response for your attention.
You asked the following
1. Progress relating to affected partners and estates
a) The number of claims that have been started by affected partners whose spouses have died and who are also pursuing claims on behalf of their spouse’s estate.
b) The number of such claims that have been fully assessed and paid.
2. Claim processing capacity
a) The number of claim managers currently employed by the Infected Blood Compensation Authority.
b) The number of claims currently being processed.
c) Details of any plans to recruit additional claim managers or increase processing capacity.
d) Based on the current processing rate, any available projections or internal estimates for the timescale required to settle all outstanding claims.
3. Urgent claims – people with less than 12 months to live
The scheme indicated that the most urgent claims would include individuals with less than 12 months to live. In relation to this group, please provide:
a) The total number of people currently or previously registered with the Authority as having less than 12 months to live.
b) The number of people registered in this category who have died while waiting to be invited to make a claim.
c) The number of people in this category who have been invited to make a claim.
d) The number of people in this category who have been invited to claim and have subsequently received compensation payments.
e) The average waiting time for individuals in this category between registration and invitation to make a claim
4. Compensation fund and interest on delayed payments
It has been publicly reported that approximately £12 billion has been set aside by the UK Government for compensation payments related to the infected blood scandal. In relation to this, please provide:
a) Information on how these funds are currently being held or administered.
b) Whether interest or investment returns are being generated from these funds, and if so, how such interest is accounted for.
c) Whether any interest generated from these funds is intended to contribute to compensation payments, scheme administration, or is returned to HM Treasury.
d) Whether the Authority has considered or implemented any policy regarding interest or additional compensation to address delays in payments to claimants, particularly given the extended time many affected families have already waited for redress.
Our response
IBCA is unable to fulfil the entirety of your request. The reasons for this are set out below.
Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 exempts IBCA from the duty to comply with a request for information if the estimated cost of complying would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’. The ‘appropriate limit’ is specified in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, and for IBCA this is set at £450.This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 working hours in determining whether IBCA holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting it.
Regulation 4 (4) of the Fees Regulations 2004 sets out that costs incurred in determining whether the requested information is held, locating, retrieving and extracting information are to be estimated at a rate of £25 per staff member per hour, expected to be spent on those activities. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether IBCA holds the information and locating, retrieving and extracting it. Where the time for compliance with a request would exceed 18 hours, a request can be refused.
The cost of complying with your request exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’. This is because in order to respond to the request, IBCA would need to, giving a conservative estimate, spend approximately 510 hours to manually check all records where an affected registration is linked to a related deceased infected registration. This is in excess of the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450/18 hours of staff time. Therefore, IBCA is unable to provide you with the information you are seeking.
Under section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act, IBCA has a duty to provide advice and assistance when refusing a request under section 12, to assist applicants in refining their request. IBCA may be able to comply with your request within the appropriate limit if you were to refine and limit the scope of your request to claim processing capacity and urgent claims which include individuals with less than 12 months to live.
Additionally I would like to take this opportunity to share that the government has budgeted for compensation through to the end of 29/30 which they estimated to total £11.8bn. Public funds are managed centrally by HM Treasury with budgets agreed with Departments and Arms Length Bodies each year. In practice this means cash is funded periodically throughout the year. In line with standard processes, IBCA requests funds on a monthly basis to pay compensation payments and there are no investment or interest gains made by IBCA. IBCA does not hold funds significantly in excess of projected compensation payments payable in any respective month.