CHO to Meet MOJ Amid Portal Concerns

CHO chair Lucy Woods and CEO Peter Gomes have a meeting arranged with the MoJ whiplash team on 13 October. The meeting is part of a regular series of interactions with officials to improve their understanding of our industry and to ensure that credit hire issues and concerns are briefed into the MoJ.

At our last meeting, we discussed whether ministers are planning to re-visit Part II of the original whiplash consultation, which covered credit hire and rehabilitation. We have since learned that there are no plans to do so until 2022, and our expectation is that will be later in 2022, as the current focus is on making the OIC portal a success.

Members will be aware that it has been extremely hard to pin down how the portal is currently performing, as different businesses have different experiences, and the MIB – which does have a helicopter view of the portal – has yet to publish any robust data.

What we do know is that while the system was designed for claimants to use themselves, the portal has lived up to its reputation as being highly complex and underlines that most if not all claimants need representation to pursue their claim.

In order to prepare for the 13 October meeting, we once again ask members to contact us with details of their experiences with the portal, four months on from launch. In particular we are keen to hear whether members have any experiences they can share around dealing with Annex C in the pre-action protocol, the section that covers non-vehicle protocols including credit hire and repair, because our sense is that this will be a pinch point for CHCs.

We will be engaging with members at next week’s CHO conference at the Belfry, on this and other matters, but please contact us if there is anything you wish us to bring up with the MoJ team.

If you have any questions or experiences you would like to relay, please contact matt.rowland@thecho.co.uk