Overworked staff at a Ministry of Justice agency made a series of serious blunders in paying out complex criminal compensation payments to victims, a report by the government’s auditors has revealed.
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority – which suffered over 10 per cent staffing cuts mainly among caseworkers – admits the problem arose because many staff quit the agency as workload increased.
It’s annual report for the last financial year says: “This issue … is the consequence of an exceptional level of staff turnover in 2015-16, that has resulted in a reduced level of resources across increasing workloads. This situation is now being rectified with a major recruitment exercise underway.”
The errors were originally found when the National Audit Office, Parliament’s financial watchdog, ran a spot check on payments made to victims in complex cases – which account for about 10 per cent of payments and are often by far the largest claims.
The worst case involved a significant overpayment of £69,023 on an award of £356,964 due to a maths mistake by a caseworker.
Another case revealed a potential underpayment of £15,118 on an award of £69,976 on a case involving two linked claims for dependency.
Other mistakes included underpayments of £80 on a £395,727 award, £1,463 on a £113,071 award, and overpayment of £42 on a £445,355 award.
The NAO investigation triggered an internal inquiry by the agency which found even more errors. The CICA has now ordered a review into its practices.
The report says : “CICA tested a further 98 complex cases, based on a random sample selected by the NAO, and found 17 errors; 8 overpayments and 9 underpayments. These included three errors over £10,000 and four errors of under £80 on sample of cases with a combined value of over £5 million.”
A statement in the annual report says: “CICA will make good any errors which resulted in an applicant being disadvantaged, and has already begun this process.
“As part of our digital transformation we have now expanded online processing to include casework on fatal injury claims and also provide end to end processing on appeal cases.”
Tribune asked for a comment from CICA on whether it planned to claw back the overpayments from people and for details of the case that led to the £69,000 error. The agency had not replied at the time of going to press.