Criminal injuries how much

Frequently Asked Questions. Contact form. Home » How much compensation will I receive? How much compensation will I receive?

Contact us. Contact Us. I consent to Criminal Injuries Compensation collecting my details through this form. Start typing and press Enter to search. The current scheme applies to all those who have sent an application on or after the 27th of November The CICA scheme was established to help those who have been a victim of a violent crime or who have been injured because of a justified risk; such as helping a Police constable or preventing a crime.

The CICA scheme can also help with victims of historical abuse such as victims of child abuse and historical sexual abuse and rape. Essentially, the CICA scheme can help victims when traditional lawsuits may not be able to. It has been set up solely to help victims of crime and at CICA UK we can help you make the most of it and claim the compensation you deserve.

The CICA scheme can help victims of violent crime move on with their lives as they can achieve civil justice and financial compensation. Victims of violent crime can often suffer for long periods of time after the event, in some serious cases, it can affect the rest of their lives. The CICA scheme can help reward the victims financially which can help with —. Although the CICA scheme aims to help as many people injured by crime as possible there are certain rules that apply which are set by Parliament.

These rules are there to make sure the compensation is awarded fairly and to avoid fraudulent claims. As the criminal injury compensation authority is a UK government body there are certain guidelines towards the residency status of the claimant as outlined below —. In these cases we will normally retain the dependency payment in our Retained Awards section and make payments through annual advances to the person with parental responsibility for the child. If you are a qualifying relative and the deceased was your main carer you may be eligible for a physical dependency payment.

We define a main carer as the person who met the majority of your care needs. The period of loss for which we may be able to provide a payment starts from the date the victim died.

We consider a claim for physical dependency in the same way as we would for a financial dependency claim. Where a person has died as a result of sustaining a criminal injury, we may make a payment in respect of their funeral expenses.

This is intended to cover the costs of a normal funeral. The list above is not exhaustive. We will consider other costs if they are supported by receipts or other satisfactory evidence. If you have already received money from public funds to help pay for funeral costs, we may take this into account when deciding your claim. If the victim has died because of their injury, qualifying relatives may be eligible to claim. The payment to the victim will affect the payment to relatives as follows:.

A qualifying relative of a person who sustained a criminal injury but who has died otherwise than as a direct result of that injury may be eligible for a payment if on the date the deceased died:.

The payment will be reduced by the amount of any award already paid to the deceased. You will only be eligible for a payment if you meet one of the residency, nationality or other requirements under paragraph This means that you must have been ordinarily resident in the UK on the date of the incident or one of the conditions in paragraphs 11 or 13 of the Scheme is met.

Please read our guide to these criteria if you think they will affect you. The responsibility for making a case for compensation lies with you. This means that you will need to provide us with the evidence necessary to decide your case. In particular, we may ask you to provide the following evidence:.

We will contact you if we need you to provide evidence to verify that you meet the residency requirements of the Scheme. We will normally accept copies of official documents but if we are in any doubt about the authenticity of a document we will ask for the original. Documents proving that you are ordinarily resident in the UK are explained in our Nationality and Residency guidance. Where appropriate we will ask you to provide medical evidence.

We may also invite you to provide this information using our Customer Portal. If there is a cost attached to obtaining the medical evidence then you may be expected to meet this. We will expect you to provide evidence that you:. If you cannot obtain medical evidence for any other reason you must let us know and we will assist you where we can. We may need additional medical or other evidence if your injuries are complex or you are claiming for a mental illness.

We may also need to check if you have any pre-existing conditions, if that has not already been covered in the initial medical evidence. In these circumstances we will either ask you to obtain a report from your treating practitioner or we may arrange for you to be seen by an expert. Where we seek additional medical or psychiatric evidence we will meet the cost of obtaining it. If we ask you to see an expert, you must keep the appointment. We will meet the reasonable cost of you travelling to and from the appointment.

If you miss the appointment, without good reason, we may deduct any costs we have to pay from any award we make. If you provide medical evidence which we did not ask for, we will only consider meeting the cost of this if it refutes evidence we have used in reaching our decision and, as a result of this, we make a different decision. When we get your claim we will tell you what information we need from you and we will verify this as needed.

You will be expected to provide evidence supporting your claim for loss of earnings. This might be pay slips or a P60 for the period immediately before you were injured, or a formal offer of a job which you were unable to take up because you were injured. Paragraphs 91 and 92 of the Scheme outline your obligations in terms of the application process and the provision of information and co-operation required during the progress of your claim.

If you need help with your application or information about our processes, our Customer Support Team will provide assistance. When we have a fully completed application from you, we will give you a personal reference number which will help us to identify it quickly if you need to contact us. The consent you provide when you make an application gives your agreement to the release of all the records, evidence and other relevant information about you and the circumstances of your injury.

This will help us make the right decision about your claim. We will tell you if we need you to get this information. We will ask you to confirm that the information you provide in your claim is true. If we find that you deliberately gave us false information or failed to give us information we asked for for example, criminal records or details of other claims we may refuse your claim.

Once we receive your application our claims officers will manage your claim. If you need information or an update on your claim, you can call our Customer Support Team. We will always try to answer your query at the first point of contact. The length of time needed to assess your claim will vary depending on how complicated it is. Complex cases may take longer to decide. This is because we will not make a decision on your case until you confirm that you have recovered, as far as possible, from your injuries.

We handle a large volume of claims every year and our awards are not designed to meet immediate needs. To ensure we can operate within our budget we have a priority system for settling claims. Although highest priority is given to our oldest cases we balance this with some newer cases where a straightforward decision can be made.

All eligible claims will be paid, but you can expect to wait up to 12 months. We will contact you when we think it is appropriate for you to supply medical evidence to support your claim. For straightforward injuries we may ask you to do this relatively quickly but, if you are still undergoing treatment we may ask you to wait until the treatment is finished or until such time as any longer term impact of your injuries are known.

In either case, we will only do this after basic eligibility has been established. This is to make sure that we do not ask you to obtain and pay for medical evidence when it is not required. If you have applied online, we may also contact you by email to invite you to provide additional information about your injuries using our Customer Portal. You will have the opportunity to confirm if the injuries that you have listed in your application form still apply when you log on to the Customer Portal.

If not, then you will have the opportunity to update them. This ensures that we have the right information to generate the right questions in a medical report specific to your injuries. The Customer Portal also gives you the opportunity to upload photographic evidence of your injuries if we need them, or download the bespoke medical report for you to take to your General Practitioner to complete if we need you to obtain this to support your claim.

If you have applied by telephone or have decided not to use the Customer Portal, we may write to you and ask you to provide this information if necessary. The Customer Portal is only one stage of the compensation process, so we may need to contact you at a later stage for further information.

When we have all the evidence we need to decide your case, it will be passed to a claims officer. This means that their decision is based on their view of what is more likely to have happened than not to have happened. It is important that you give the claims officer all the evidence that they ask you to provide in order for them to be able to make a decision in your case.

We will inform you of our decision on your claim as soon as it is made. If we have reduced or refused a payment, we will tell you why. The Scheme provides compensation payments to those with the most serious injuries and those who have been the victim of the most distressing crimes.

You may be eligible for a payment under the Scheme if your criminal injury is described in the tariff of injuries. If you already had an injury which is listed in the tariff but it has been made worse as a direct result of a crime of violence you may still be entitled to a payment. We will only make a payment to reflect how much the existing injury has been made worse, not for the injury itself. If you suffer a mental injury as a result of a sexual assault, we will pay you either the tariff value for the type of assault or the value of the mental injury.

We will pay whichever has the highest value; you will not receive a payment for both. This is because the tariff for a sexual assault takes account of the mental trauma. If you need to have an operation as a result of the injury you will not receive a separate payment for scarring arising from the operation. If you have two or more injuries so serious that each, on its own, would qualify, you may be entitled to:. The Scheme does not allow us to pay for more than three injuries.

However, there are additional tariff payments which you can receive if, as a direct result of your injury or assault, you:. If you are unable to work as a direct result of a criminal injury you may be eligible to claim a loss of earnings payment.

Your criminal injury must be serious enough to have resulted in a total inability to undertake paid work, or a very limited capacity to do so. By very limited capacity we mean that the extent of your injuries means that you are not capable of undertaking more than a few hours of paid work per week.

If you have capacity for paid work, but the type of work is restricted because of your injuries, you will not qualify for a loss of earnings payment.

This may include those in full time education or those who are unable to work by reason of their age or caring responsibilities; and. The period of 28 weeks will usually run from the date of the injury. You cannot get loss of earnings for the first 28 weeks of loss. We will calculate the length of any payment, beginning after you have lost 28 weeks of earnings up until whichever is earliest of:. The loss of earnings payment will be calculated at the rate of statutory sick pay in force at the date of deciding your claim.

You can only ask us to consider a claim for special expenses if your injuries mean you have lost earnings or earning capacity, or have been incapacitated to a similar extent, for more than 28 weeks.

We will, however, pay the special expenses from the date of the actual injury. This is different from the loss of earnings rule where we can pay only from week In order to qualify for a special expenses payment you must be able to prove that the goods or services, or something similar, is not available free of charge from another source. The expense must also be:. You may claim for damage to property or equipment belonging to you which you relied on as a physical aid and which was damaged in the incident.

Examples would include walking sticks, spectacles and dentures. We will ask you for receipts for these. You may also be able to claim for costs arising from treatment under the NHS. We will need proof of what it is you have to pay. Information about NHS services and costs is available from:.

If you require special equipment; for example, physical aids including specially-adapted vehicles, wheelchairs and walking aids and kitchen implements to help people whose grip has weakened you may be able to claim. We will only consider an award for these costs if the equipment is necessary rather than desirable and that something similar is not available free of charge from another source.

We may pay for adaptations to your home, which can include changes both inside and outside your home such as a ramp or a stair lift to improve your independence or ability to get around. Before we will agree to pay for adaptations we will need proof that these are necessary and that the adaptations you require or similar are not available through any other source. We may pay the cost of care relating to your bodily functions including toileting, bathing and continence management , or to the preparation of meals when you are physically unable to cook, or it would be dangerous for you to do so and supervision to avoid substantial risk to you and others.

We will need confirmation that this care is not available free of change from any other source. We may pay the cost of setting up a trust where we have directed this under paragraph of the Scheme, but not any costs associated with administering that.

Since we will meet costs only if they cannot be met by the NHS or your local authority, we will ask you for a copy of the local authority assessment of needs showing what, if anything they cannot or will not provide. We must avoid any double payment. We will reduce any payment for special expenses to take account of social security benefits you receive or could receive to meet any of the same expenses. If the benefit is available to you, we have to take account of it, whether or not you choose to claim it.

The Scheme says that if you could receive any social security or other state benefits, we may defer making a decision until you have taken steps to claim them. Where certain special expenses are awarded we will reduce your payment to take account of any payment you have received, or are entitled to, through insurance, unless it was paid for by you or by the person with parental responsibility if you were injured as a child.

The Scheme requires that all incidents for which a claim is made be reported to the police. We may also withhold a payment if the incident is not reported to the police as soon as is reasonably practicable.

It is not necessary for the person who injured you to be identified, or convicted, in order for you to get a payment. However, we expect you to have done everything reasonably possible to help the police catch your assailant, and bring them to justice.

While you may be reluctant to bring charges for example, if you fear a revenge attack or reprisal the Scheme is publicly funded and you will not be eligible for a payment unless you co-operate fully with the investigation into the crime and any prosecution that follows. It is your responsibility to give all reasonable assistance to us or another person or body in connection with your claim. We may refuse or reduce your claim if:. The Scheme is intended to compensate victims of crimes of violence.

Before making a payment we have to consider if your behaviour before, during or after the incident caused or contributed to the incident in which you were injured. We will look at what happened at the time of the incident, such as whether you willingly took part in a fight. We will also consider your behaviour after the incident happened, such as whether you sought revenge against your assailant.

When assessing conduct we will not take into account intoxication through alcohol or drugs to the extent that such intoxication made you more vulnerable to becoming a victim of a crime of violence. The use of alcohol or drugs is only a conduct issue if it played a direct role in provoking the incident that led to the assault. We will not reduce or withhold a payment solely because your consumption of alcohol or use of drugs made you more vulnerable to being attacked.