By: 22 October 2015
Claims Portal to undergo major 2016 changes – and claimant solicitors will have to pay for them

The Claims Portal has announced scheduled updates to its system, which will be paid for by the introduction of a user fee.

There will be a fee for every new claim lodged with the portal from next year to pay for two sets of system upgrades. A spokesman for Claims Portal told the Law Society Gazette that  said the charge is likely to be between £1 and £3 per claims notification form, which will be non-refundable.

Phase 1, taking place in April 2016, will be an interim release in preparation for the final software release in December.

This interim release will deliver improvements to the functionality of the service including visibility of claims and more functions for administrator users.
This phase is not expected to impact A2A users.

Phase 2, which will be launched in December 2016, will deliver changes to the service that will impact both web and A2A users.

As well as introducing a charge to claimant representatives using the portal at the point of submitting a new Claims Notification Form, Release 5 will give users the ability to transfer claims between organisations in bulk; provide revised Claim Notification Forms; and outline new rules relating to data retention to deal with older claims that no longer progress through the process.

The changes will begin with a new look interface from 2 November.

As a result of next month’s change, the portal will not be operational from 5pm on 30 October until 7am on 2 November.

Tim Wallis, the chairman of Claims Portal has said that those users accessing the service from 2 November may have to clear their internet caches and refresh their browsers to ensure that the new look site can be viewed correctly.

Wallis added that it is currently expected that technical documents for A2A users will be available from September 2016.