UK establishes compensation scheme for families of Horizon post office victims
→Redress claims teams must process family claims via personal‑injury or events‑based routes
Change
UK has established a compensation scheme obliging close relatives of Horizon-affected post office operators to claim either via a fully assessed personal-injury route requiring medical evidence or via an events-based fixed-payment route for relatives of branch owners who experienced qualifying harms such as criminal prosecution or bankruptcy, with recognition payments acknowledged as lower than assessed awards and the £15,120 Fatal Accidents Act 1976 figure cited as a comparator.
Why it matters
Family claimants who can produce medical evidence must enter a full personal‑injury assessment where compensation is judged case‑by‑case. Relatives without medical evidence are confined to an events‑based fixed‑payment route tied to qualifying harms (for example, criminal prosecution or bankruptcy) and will receive recognition payments that the government says are lower than assessed awards.
Implications
- — Compensation claims‑administration teams operating the UK family scheme must immediately route each application into either the fully assessed personal‑injury stream (requiring medical evidence) or the events‑based fixed‑payment stream — failure to place a claimant in one of these streams prevents disbursement of the scheme’s payments.
- — Legal teams representing relatives of Horizon‑affected post office operators must now file either medical‑evidence personal‑injury claims or documentation of a qualifying event (criminal prosecution, bankruptcy) when submitting applications — relatives who do not provide the required evidence risk receiving only the lower recognition payment or no compensation under the scheme.
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Source
View on The Guardian