Obtaining police information – The first stage of the CICA process

Once your claim application has been submitted to the CICA, they will begin investigating your claim. The beginning of their investigation involves obtaining police information about you and your incident.

This information usually comprises of:

• A copy of the police report on the incident you are seeking to claim for
• A convictions check for yourself – this is to check you do not have any unspent criminal convictions at the start of the claim. If you are unsure about unspent convictions, or the impact of convictions on your CICA claim, please see this article.

How long does it take for the CICA to obtain this information?

The CICA advise that each stage of the claim process should take on average 3 months. However it can take the CICA anywhere between a few weeks to a number of months to obtain the information they require to progress your claim.

Why is it taking the CICA so long to obtain the information?

This can be for a number of reasons. The CICA advise they chase their requests for information from the police every 28 days. However sometimes certain factors can cause this stage to be delayed. For instance:

• You have impending convictions – the CICA will put a claim on hold until the result of this impending conviction is known
• The police have advised their investigation is ongoing and they cannot provide a complete report yet
• The CICA received the police report, but now require further information on certain aspects of the case circumstances or investigation
• The police are operating under a backlog and have not been able to process the request yet

How can I get the CICA to obtain this information faster?

Unfortunately it is difficult to do so. The CICA cannot generally influence how quickly the police provide the information they need as they are two distinct organisations.

This therefore makes it difficult for you or any representative you may have to force this to happen. If you do think it is taking the CICA an extremely lengthy period of time to obtain police information, you should speak to your representative for more information regarding this.

What do the CICA do when they have the police information?

They will perform an assessment of this. Assessments are used by the CICA to determine what the next stages in the process are. It is important to note that these assessments are separate to initially obtaining the information.

Therefore it can take a separate period of time for the CICA to complete their assessment of the information on top of any time taken to obtain it.

What could the result of the assessment of the police information be?

The CICA could be happy with the content of the information. This usually indicates that you have no unspent criminal convictions and that the circumstances of your application are deemed truthful.

Alternatively the CICA could issue a rejection based on this assessment. This could be for a number of reasons under their scheme, for instance:

• Your conduct before, during or after your incident would make it inappropriate to issue an award
• You have an unspent criminal conviction
• The police could not evidentially establish that your incident happened how you described

Whether to challenge or accept rejections of this variety is your choice, however in most circumstances the CICA will take the argument of the police above an applicant.

What happens if the CICA are happy with the police information?

They will progress your claim to the next stage of the claims process. The CICA will not usually inform you that the police stage has been completed, rather just send you a form relevant to the next stage of the process.

It is generally safe to assume that if the CICA have sent you documentation regarding your injuries, medical evidence or your treatment that they are satisfied with the police information.

However please note, the CICA will be informed if you receive any convictions or have any impending convictions even after this stage in the process is complete.

Further reading

Criminal Injury Claims – Oakwood Solicitors Ltd

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