5,000 Decisions by March: Can IBCA’s System Cope With the Claims Already Waiting?

By The Unheard Voice

The Infected Blood Compensation Authority has set itself an important ambition: to bring 5,000 claims to a decision between April 2026 and March 2027.

The figure appears in IBCA’s community update published on 7 September. It is a significant commitment—but ambition must be matched by capacity, transparency and evidence that claims can move smoothly through every stage of the process.

The same update records that, as of 25 August, 6,321 people had been asked to start their claim, 5,785 had begun the process and 3,512 had received compensation payments totalling just over £2.25 billion.

Those headline figures show activity. They do not, however, reveal how long claims spend waiting between individual stages or where delays are developing inside the system.

Reports of questions waiting on desks

The Unheard Voice has heard from claimants who say they completed the questions requested by their claims manager, but that their case then remained on the claims manager’s desk for around two weeks before being sent for review.

These individual accounts do not establish that every claim is experiencing the same delay. Nor do they prove that staff are doing anything improper. Claims may differ in complexity, evidence requirements and the checks needed before they can progress.

But the reports raise a legitimate operational question: if completed work is already waiting at basic handover points, how will the system cope as thousands more claims move towards decision?

A delay of two weeks may sound modest when viewed in isolation. For people who have already waited decades for recognition and compensation, it can feel very different. It also matters when the same delay is potentially repeated across hundreds or thousands of claims.

Where is the bottleneck?

Public discussion has frequently focused on the number of claims managers. Staffing numbers alone do not show whether the whole process has sufficient capacity.

A claim may pass through evidence gathering, calculation, quality assurance, legal review or other checks before an offer can be made. Increasing the number of claims entering the service will not necessarily increase completed decisions if a later stage lacks enough trained staff.

IBCA should therefore publish more than the number of people invited, started, offered or paid. The community also needs to understand:

• How many claims are waiting to be sent for review. • How many are currently undergoing review. • The average and longest waiting times between each main stage. • Whether review teams have enough staff for the expected volume. • How frequently claims are returned for additional information. • What operational safeguards will prevent an increase in volume from producing a larger backlog.

Without this information, it is impossible for the public to judge whether the 5,000-decision ambition is supported by a credible delivery plan.

Invited, started, decided and paid are not the same

The language used in progress reports matters.

A person being invited to begin a claim is not the same as a claim being actively assessed. Starting a claim is not the same as reaching a decision. Receiving an offer is not necessarily the same as receiving payment.

IBCA’s ambition specifically refers to bringing 5,000 claims to a decision. Progress against that target should therefore be reported using a clear and consistent definition of “decision”.

IBCA should explain how many of the 5,000 decisions have already been achieved since April 2026, which claimant groups are included and what monthly rate will be required to meet the target by the end of March 2027.

The calculation must also account for the fact that some people have more than one claim. IBCA says related claims may be processed together or that one claim may need to be assessed before another can progress. That may be operationally necessary, but it can make headline totals harder for the community to interpret.

Less frequent reporting at a critical moment

IBCA has also announced that it is moving from fortnightly to monthly publication of its compensation and registration figures.

Its final fortnightly report was published on 27 August. The first monthly report will not appear until 8 October and will cover activity from 26 August to 30 September.

IBCA says monthly figures will provide a fuller picture and avoid short-term variations making progress difficult to understand. There may be value in showing longer-term trends, but the change creates a six-week gap between published updates at a critical point in the scheme’s development.

This is happening while more groups are being brought into the service, new regulations are being implemented and IBCA is working towards its 5,000-decision ambition.

Monthly reporting must not become less transparent reporting. IBCA could preserve meaningful scrutiny by publishing processing-time data, the number of claims at each internal stage and progress against its stated target.

What happens when the fourth regulations take effect?

The fourth set of compensation regulations became law on 24 July and will form part of IBCA’s service from 1 October.

IBCA says its calculator, website and guidance will be updated and that claims entering the service after that date will have the new regulations applied. It must also revisit some claims that have already been paid where the changes may mean additional money is owed.

That creates another major workload alongside new claims.

The public therefore needs to understand how IBCA will balance new invitations, existing cases, reviews under the amended regulations and any claims already waiting within the system.

A target needs a delivery plan

The ambition to bring 5,000 claims to a decision should not be dismissed. If achieved fairly and accurately, it would represent meaningful progress for thousands of people.

But targets do not move claims. People, systems and properly managed processes do.

IBCA must demonstrate that it understands where delays are occurring and that it has enough capacity at every stage—not simply at the point where a claimant is allocated a claims manager.

The questions are simple:

How many claims are waiting between stages today? How long are they waiting? Where are the current bottlenecks? And what evidence gives IBCA confidence that it can reach 5,000 decisions by March 2027 without leaving more people stuck in another queue?

The infected blood community has waited long enough for systems that promise progress while people remain trapped inside them.

An ambition is welcome. Now the community needs to see the plan behind it.

Sources: IBCA Community Update, 7 September 2026: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ibca-community-update-7-september-2026/ibca-community-update-7-september-2026

IBCA compensation statistics: https://ibca.org.uk/statistics/

— The Unheard Voice