Published 4 November 2026
This is a summary of the Chief Executive's update from 3 November 2026 public board meeting.
Claims update
How we work through claims
We have separate claim manager teams for each group:
- people living with infection
- people claiming on behalf of the estate of someone who has died (deceased infected)
- people affected
Each team works through its own group at the same time as the others.
We continue to follow the Inquiry's recommendations on prioritisation. People can still register to make a claim, and we prioritise new registrations in the same way.
The order in which we bring in claims is not based on when someone registered. It reflects people's circumstances and is dynamic. For example, we check for new registrations from anyone who tells us they are at the end of life, and we bring them straight into the service.
This means the number of people in each group and priority category keeps changing. One group may move through its priority categories faster than another, depending on how many people have registered.
We currently receive about 500 new registrations each month. These are spread across the 3 groups, but the majority are for affected claims. This is what we mean by working in parallel.
Growing the claims service
In line with our service strategy, we began to grow the service more fully from 1 October. This means we are bringing in more affected claims than before.
Our last published statistics showed that we had:
- brought in 7,151 people
- made 3,830 offers, worth £2.98 billion
- paid 3,722 people, a total of £2.37 billion
Our next monthly statistics will be published on 12 November. They will show a larger jump than usual in the number of claims we have started.
Living with infection: We have asked everyone who has registered, and who has never been compensated, to come into the service. We will continue to start new registrations quickly, particularly for people at the end of life.
Deceased infected: We have now started over 60% of these claims. In line with the Inquiry's recommendations, we have brought in all end of life claims and all claims for people over 75. We are now working with people who have told us they have not had any compensation before.
Our commitment on infected claims: At the Public Accounts Committee, our Chief Executive made a commitment that we would start claims for all infected people who had registered their intent to claim by 7 July. This includes deceased infected claims. We would do this by the end of March 2027.
At that point, around 4,500 infected claims were registered with us. After removing duplicates, and allowing for new registrations, the figure is now around 4,100.
We are confident we will be able to bring this volume into service by the end of 2026 which barring any significant increases in registration means that we will have brought in all of the infected by the end of this calendar year.
Affected claims: We have started all claims from people who have told us they are nearing the end of life. We are now working with people over 75. More than 2,500 people over 75 are currently registered for an affected claim.
We are considering how we prioritise affected claims, following feedback from the community and stakeholder groups. For example, people have asked us to treat the family as a whole, rather than the individual.
This would mean people supporting family members would not have to re-engage with us reducing re traumatisation and would mean everyone in a family would also have the same claim manager.
We will also explore bringing in affected claims where the linked foundational claim has been completed. This would mean affected people are not delayed while they wait for linked claims to move forward.
We will talk to stakeholders and Community Advisory Panel (CAP) members, and carry out community-driven design work before we make any final decisions.
Treating the person as a whole: Since June, as well as following the Inquiry's prioritisation order, we have started all of an individual's linked associated claims together. For example, someone may have started their LINC claim because they have advanced liver disease. If they also have affected claims, we will begin those at the same time. Anyone brought in this way will already have met a priority in one of the groups.
Fourth Regulations
In addition to continuing to bring people into the service, we need to balance this with making additional payments to those who are entitled to another compensation payment due to the 4th regulations.
In August we wrote to everyone previously paid letting them know that from October we would be in touch to let them know if they were impacted by 4th Regs or not. To note, people who received an offer from 1 October will have the 4th regs applied at that point and wont need to be re visited.
We have now reviewed all paid claims. We now need to reconsider a considerable amount (just over 3000) of these as potentially needing an uplift.
We have learned lessons from the Third Regulations. Notifying everyone took too long, the process was manual, and people received their letters at different times. On 16 November we will send letters and emails in bulk to everyone who prefers email or post. People may still receive them at slightly different times, depending on their contact preferences.
We are also designing our correspondence with support from CAP members.
For people who have already received a core award, we aim to make additional payments to the vast majority by the end of this business year (31 March 2027). This is in line with our business plan. We cannot promise to pay everyone, because we rely on others, such as the NHS, to give us information.
Supplementary route
We aim to begin supplementary claims from April 2027. We have started high-level design work. We have also drawn up a list of policy issues to resolve before we can begin paying supplementary claims.
We are prioritising the questions the community most wants answered. We are seeking to prioritise those policy questions we know the community are seeking more detail on so we can communicate our position on these as soon as we have them and not wait until we start claims in April. We will share more through our community update and other channels in the coming months.
A separate team will do most of the detailed design and development of processes, tools and guidance. They have started this week. This allows us to carry on with other priority work including implementing our claim management system and the scheme transfers in parallel with progressing the supplementary route.
External calculator
After we updated our external calculator to reflect the Fourth Regulations, it was unavailable on our website over a weekend. This was because a certificate had expired. We fixed it as soon as we found out on the Monday morning. As a result we have identified a gap in our monitoring and we are expanding it to cover the webpage that links to the calculator, as well as the calculator itself.
Community members also told us the breakdowns need to be clearer about what is and is not included, particularly in relation to interferon. We have been meeting with some community members to get their feedback and are sharing updated designs with them for challenge and advice before we release an update. These sessions have been very useful and we are grateful for people's time.
Security monitoring
Our platform and security teams have been investigating and resolving security vulnerabilities. They are assessing possible exposure across our digital services and infrastructure. These include:
- the widely reported global PHP vulnerability to which we have limited exposure (we only use this on dashboarding software which is isolated),
- a reported data breach at one of our suppliers, where staff or billing details may have been compromised (no claim information is held with them so this is not impacted), which increases the risk of phishing which we are mitigating with reminders to teams. To note it was later confirmed no IBCA staff information was exposed.
- vulnerabilities in a software framework tool, found by our security tooling, which we have taken immediate action to ensure patching.
We are confident in the coverage of our web application firewall and monitoring tools. We have not identified any exposures, and none of these issues affect service delivery.
We are treating these as a priority incident so they are fully investigated and resolved quickly. This has delayed some planned releases to internal systems, but none of these affect the pace of claims.
Infected Blood Support Schemes update
We are working closely with the Infected Blood Support Schemes (IBSS) and the Cabinet Office to make sure the transfer goes well. Our priority is that payments are not interrupted.
We are working with the schemes so that the data transferring to IBCA is consolidated into a single scheme. This will allow us to make payments.
An audit of the project has recently concluded, and we are responding to its recommendations. These include documenting our contingency plan, our testing strategy and our minimum viable product. We have also given CAP detailed information on how the schemes will move to IBCA. We asked for their views on the risks and how to reduce them.
The first letter to everyone transferring is being produced with input from user research. It will be sent in the week beginning 23 November.
Board governance
We are reviewing the terms of reference of the board's committees to make sure our governance is working effectively. Today the board will consider the terms of reference for the Quality, Finance and Performance Committee.
We expect the terms of reference for the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee and the Remuneration Committee will come to the board's February meeting, once those committees have reviewed them.
Annual report and accounts
IBCA's Annual Report and Accounts for 2025 to 2026 were laid before Parliament on Monday 14 September. They are also published on our website.
Planning for the 2026 to 2027 accounts and audit is under way. The Audit and Risk Assurance Committee discussed it last month.
Culture
Our culture shapes how people experience IBCA. Everyone who interacts with us should receive a respectful, dignified, committed and capable service. To support our people to do their best for the community, we are rolling out a programme called Making IBCA a Great Place to Work.
Over the next 12 months, we will develop what we offer our people on capability, leadership, learning and development. We will keep listening to our people through regular engagement, and respond to what they tell us.
We may not get everything right the first time in a relatively new organisation. Setting up an organisation of our size at this speed brings challenges. We are committed to learning and improving.
Our people will be able to share their views throughout the programme. Any internal work we do will be to improve the service the community receives.