Thank you for your email received on 16 July 2026, in which you made a request for access to certain information which may be held by the Infected Blood Compensation Authority.
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.
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Data and Operations directorates of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority. We can confirm that the information you have requested is held by the Infected Blood Compensation Authority.
You asked the following
1. Out of the cohort of 695 referenced deceased estate claims, why have only 496 eligible individuals or their representatives formally progressed or completed a claim?
Is this primarily due to delays in the IBCA’s phased invitation rollout, or are there other active administrative hurdles?
2. Specifically: How many of these deceased estate claims have been formally refused or put on hold specifically due to a lack of available historical medical records or primary evidence?
3.To what extent are outstanding claims in this cohort currently delayed by the legal requirement to retrospectively secure a Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration?
To ensure ongoing transparency for the infected blood community, I would also like to ask if the IBCA can integrate these specific metrics into its regular registration and compensation progress updates. Specifically, we as victims of this atrocity request that future publications explicitly include:
- The exact raw figures and percentage breakdown of estate claims currently stalled or refused due to missing medical evidence.
- The percentage of registered intents to claim that are awaiting probate confirmation before they can proceed.
Our response
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and have provided a response for your attention below.
- On the assumption that the 496/695 figure for estate claims represents the stage between the invitation being sent and the claim being started, this gap is not due to the phased rollout or active administrative hurdles. Instead, it represents the time it takes for the individual to respond to the invitation to start their claim.
- A total of 18 Deceased Infected Claims have been determined to have been formally refused or put on hold due to a lack of available historical medical records or primary evidence.
- We have 9 ongoing claims currently at step ‘3a. Probate Confirmed’, where 8 had started this step either before or on the same day as step ‘2. First Call’, we unfortunately cannot confidently answer to what extent this step is delaying ongoing claims.
We are incredibly grateful for your feedback, hearing directly from the community is invaluable to us. Please know that we have formally logged your feedback below through our reporting mechanism. Your feedback will be fully fed back to the Community Advisory Panel and the board to inform their ongoing discussions regarding how we report our latest statistics.