Public Liability Claim Statistics UK

How Many Public Liability Claims are Made Each Year?

In the year ending 31 March 2023, there were 58,933 public liability claims cases registered with the Compensation Recovery Unit (CRU). This number has been ticking up over the past few years, but still remains far lower than figures pre-pandemic. In the past 10 years, the 2013/14 year saw the highest number of submitted public liability claims: 103,578.

Claims can take time to settle, as you can see in the following table—there is some variability between the figures for claims registered and claims settled, which implies they're not all settled in the year the claim was made. This is not a surprise given the time it can take for lawyers and insurance companies to decide upon a settlement!

Number of Public Liability Claims UK

What is Public Liability?

Public liability is insurance that protects a business against claims of accidental injury at your place of business or when you're working off-site. Public liability claims are brought by third parties like customers, clients, landlords, vendors, passersby and other members of the public.

(Public liability insurance does not cover injury claims made by employees; these fall under employers' liability insurance).

What is the CRU?

The CRU is a part of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and its mission is to recover social security benefits in compensation cases and NHS costs in injury cases, where appropriate. The CRU collects data on public liability claims, employers' liability claims, motor liability claims and more. Specifically, the CRU aims to recover two types of costs:

Are All Public Liability Claims Registered?

Any person or business who receives a claim for compensation must register the claim within 14 days. Registering the claim does not mean that the compensator accepts liability for the accident, injury or disease.

Getting Public Liability Insurance

If you don't have public liability insurance for your business yet, and you worry about being one of the nearly 100,000 compensators in public liability claims, then take out a public liabilty policy ASAP. Click below to get started.