Amount paid out for personal injury claims through the Personal Injury Discount Rate: FOI release

Information requested

The amount paid out by the Scottish Government for personal injury claims through the Personal Injury Discount Rate in Scotland for the years 2020 – 2021, 2021 – 2022, and 2022 – 2023 and the amount paid out by the Scottish Government from all personal injury claims involving a road incident for the same years.

Response

In your request you have asked for information about the amount paid out by the Scottish Government for personal injury claims. I have interpreted your request to mean the amount paid to SG staff for injuries suffered at work. 

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12. In this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. This is because there is no centrally held record of personal injury claims brought by SG staff. Instead information about claims are held on the file of the employee who raised the claim and costs are not met from a central budget. The cost of checking all employees records to locate the information requested would therefore exceed the £600 limit.

You will wish to note that this information relates to the arrangements that apply in the core Director-General areas within the Scottish Government (see Annex A for details). Other areas such as SG Agencies may operate different arrangements.

Annex A

Core Scottish Government:
Director-General Communities
Director-General Corporate
Director-General Economy
Director-General Education and Justice
Director-General Health and Social Care
Director-General Net Zero
Director-General Scottish Exchequer
Director-General Strategy and External Affairs

In relation to your query around the amount paid out by the Scottish Government from all personal injury claims involving a road incident for the same years. Please see details below for personal injury claims (PIC) for road incidents for SG fleet related activity (vehicles owned or on loan to the SG) for the periods referred to.

To note the figures only include the amounts paid in respect of the actual PIC aspect of any claim made against SG and does not include legal costs, vehicles repair, hire or any other costs incurred and settled by the SG.

Year	Total Personal Injury claim	Case number(s)
2020/21	£0	N/a
2021/22	£8,550	1526, 1613
2022/23	£0	N/a

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.