As we continue to design and build a claim service for compensation, the Infected Blood Authority (IBCA) is inviting more claims so we can learn and improve as we go.
This week we will be asking a further 25 people to begin their compensation claim. This follows the very first invitations we sent in October 2024, and another 25 in December.
We’ll continue to regularly send out invites to claim, and by the end of March we plan to have invited around 250 people to help us test our service, aiming to then open up the claims service further after that.
We know that this may be frustrating for all those waiting to claim and not yet able to do so, but by starting small and designing the claims service as we go, we’ll be able to open up quicker to everyone as a result.
As with previous invitations, the latest group asked to claim will be people from across the infected blood community who are registered with one of the four support schemes. They include people in a range of age groups and with different types and severity of infection.
We will soon begin to regularly publish how many claims we are processing. By December 2024, we had made compensation offers to 10 people with a total value of more than £13 million, with more claims now in progress.
What we have learnt so far
As part of our approach to starting small and building the claim service as we go, we’re already learning lessons from these first claims, including:
- Some claims are taking longer to finalise because we need more or different information in order to make an accurate calculation. In each case, we’re working with the person who is claiming to agree on how and where we find the right information. This is helping us learn how we can speed up claims in future.
- A small number of invites have not yet been responded to, or accepted. This means that the number of offers made won’t always match the number of invitations sent.
- For some people, it can be useful to take more time to consider a compensation offer and seek further advice. Feedback tells us that offering legal and financial advice, paid for by IBCA, has been useful to those claiming. Anyone claiming has up to three months to make a decision about their claim after they receive the offer.