VWF claim news
01/08/2007
Miners lose out to bad planning
The National Audit Office has uncovered a shocking revelation which could have made a significant difference to the amount of compensation miners have received for industrial diseases such as Vibration White Finger (VWF) and the timescale for which they have had to wait for their settlements.
A report published on 18th June said that there were faults in the way the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) handled the project during its early years, in that an inadequate amount of civil servants were employed to administer the scheme.
As a result many ex-miners were forced to wait for extended periods to receive their compensation. In a bid to fix this a High Court judgement was made in 1998 to make payouts to those with Chronic Pulmonary Disease and VWF.
Over 575,000 compensation claims have been settled and 3.6 billion paid out in compensation to date. However, there are still approximately 185 cases outstanding, with some unlikely to be completed before 2009.
Those compensation claims already settled have accumulated admininistration costs of a whopping 1.9 billion and it is thought that these costs are set to rise with the impending settlements.
One of the most disparaging parts of the report stated, "The Department produced limited strategic oversight of forward planning ahead of the court decisions and, crucially, insufficient Departmental staff were initially allocated to the task.
"It did not take actuarial advice on the scale of the liability and the forecasts that were made, initially by the Corporation, underestimated the number of potential claimants.
"The initial procedures put in place proved to be particularly complex to administer."
In their defence, the DTI insist their procedures have greatly improved, now both faster and more robust they have cleared much of the backlog of claims while saving the UK taxpayer as much as 100 million.
A fast-track procedure is certainly good news for VWF sufferers and their families who may have been waiting for personal injury compensation to support themselves and their families for some time.
