Insurance chiefs have called for urgent reform to the system for industrial deafness claims. The call was made yesterday (6 November) by the Association of British Insurers.
According to James Dalton, the head of liability for the association, the number of industrial deafness claims has gone up from 1,000 in March 2012 to 3,500 in March 2014.
The calls come amidst a time of increasing employer accountability for injuries sustained by workforces, including previously disputed injuries that occur over a long period of time, often many years.
The industry has previously backed legislative changes to mirror the reforms made to whiplash claims. In his speech, Dalton explained that insurers want fixed legal fees from any future government to curb the spiralling costs of hearing loss claims.
He said: “We need to seriously explore if the existing claims portal can be adapted to deal with multi-defendant claims, or if there is a need for a standalone portal for deafness claims to reduce the 17 months that it currently takes to settle a typical industrial deafness claim.”
Dalton’s speech comes days after a claim from a former railway worker was rejected by the Court of Appeal. The claimant, Howard Platt, claimed to have suffered hearing loss whilst working at an engineering works from 1953 to 1988. In that case, Mr Platt had 11 separate consultants on hearing problems from 1982 to 2011, and it was not until 2011 that he was told that part of his hearing loss was noise-induced (NIHL), owing to his occupation.
Whilst Lord Justice Vos said it was reasonable for Mr Platt to have made further inquiries once the issue of noise exposure had been raised, the lawyer defending the Department of Transport in the case said that the judgement could assist in deterring future claims that lacked sufficient evidence.
They said: “Those defending NIHL claims are often faced with GP notes littered with reference to tinnitus and hearing problems over many years before a claim is brought.
“The burden is on the claimant to show he had neither actual knowledge or ought not to be imputed with constructive knowledge and the threshold is reasonably high, as is made clear throughout the judgement.”