Civil Proceedings: Injuries
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the a) average, b) shortest and c) longest time taken is to settle a civil claim for injury from the letter of the claim to the settlement outcome i) pre-and ii) post-covid.
Answered by Sarah Sackman
Neither the Ministry of Justice or HM Courts and Tribunal Services hold data on the time taken to settle a civil claim for injury from the letter of claim to the settlement outcome pre - or post-Covid.
The Ministry of Justice does publish Civil Justice Statistics quarterly which includes details of the number of trials and the average time (mean/median) from claim issue to trial. It is important to note that the vast majority of civil cases are settled before reaching trial and of those that do (approx. 3%), the time that parties take to come to trial is not solely in the control of the courts. That said, the latest data for January to March 2026 show that the median time taken for small claims to go to trial was 5.1 weeks faster than the same period in 2025 and for the fast/intermediate/multi track claims to go to trial was 10.7 weeks faster than the same period last year. These statistics can be found at: Civil justice statistics quarterly: January to March 2026 - GOV.UK. Statistics covering previous quarters can be found within the main tables of this publication.
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