The 17th edition of the Judicial College Guidelines has been published in March 2024.
This publication is a resource for insurance and legal professionals to value personal injury claims in England and Wales.
Each chapter focuses on a different injury and provides for different levels of severity. There are guideline figures for compensating each injury type.
This tool is used to allow for consistency in personal injury negotiations between parties.
There must be some allowance for discretion when looking at awards as each claimant is impacted in a different way.
A judgement in the case of Blair v Jaber [2023] there was consideration of the impact of inflation between publication of the editions of the JC Guidelines. The example being that the 15th edition was published in 2019 and the 16th in 2022. It was argued that the award for pain, suffering and loss of amenity should be uplifted to take into account the RPI (Retail Price Index) to account for inflation. The Court agreed with this. To take this into account the latest edition of the guidelines has provided an introductory note on inflation. This highlights that the changes in the RPI between publications must be taken into account.
An example of the consideration of the RPI inflation is provided. Looking at the 16th edition of the guidelines an injury award, using the RPI of September 2021 would be £39,170 would need to be recalculated at £47,776 if you were valuing the same claim in June 2023. This is due to an inflationary increase of 22% between those periods.
This is a key point for both claimants and defendants who are valuing general damages presently using he 17th edition of the guidelines. These guidelines rely on the RPI of August 2023 but the publication was in March 2024. As such appropriate adjustments should be made to reserves to take into account any change to the RPI when valuing those claims.
Nick Lavelle, Managing Director, Coris UK, nlavelle@coris-uk.co.uk