2. Guidance for compensators
2.4 Urgent requests for Certificates of Recoverable Benefits
If you need a Certificate urgently (e.g. because of an imminent court hearing) we will do our best to issue one as soon as possible. You must provide CRU with confirmation of the urgency (e.g. a letter from the court).
It may not be possible to issue the Certificate immediately but we will send it as quickly as possible.
2.5 The Certificate of Recoverable Benefits
The Certificate will include:
- details of the injured person’s identity and where appropriate
the date of the incident which gave rise to the
compensation claim; - the total of each recoverable benefit paid up to a specified date;
- the rate expected to be paid for a short future period if benefit is still in payment;
- the date the Certificate ceases to be valid;
- the total amount we require to be repaid;
- a note to say whether any of the above amounts or dates have been estimated.
The period of validity of Certificates varies according to circumstances. It is important to check each Certificate to establish how long it is valid for.
Generally we issue:
A Certificate valid for 1 day: where there was no valid Certificate in issue at the time the claim was settled and compensation paid.
A Certificate valid for 16 weeks: when benefits are still in payment or the Certificate is issued within 12 months of the date of accident or injury.
A Certificate valid for 26 weeks: where the accident or injury was more than 9 months ago, recoverable benefits have not been paid in the last 6 months or no recoverable benefits have been paid since the accident or injury.
2.6 Powers to Estimate
The law allows us to estimate any amount, date or period specified in the Certificate (Social Security (Recovery of Benefits) Act 1997, Section 5(4)).
2.7 Issue of the Certificate
We will send the Certificate to you and at the same time we will send a copy to the injured person or his representative.
Write to us if you have any queries about the Certificate. We will issue a further Certificate if necessary (see also Section 7 Reviews and Appeals).
2.8 Increases in Certificates
After a Certificate has been issued we may become aware that further recoverable benefits have been paid. These benefits would have been included in the Certificate had we been aware of them at the time it was issued.
During the validity of a Certificate the amount of recoverable benefit shown cannot be increased, except where the compensator has provided us with incorrect or insufficient information.
If recoverable benefits are inadvertently omitted from a Certificate, and a compensation payment is not made during the period of validity of that Certificate, the additional benefits will be shown on any later Certificate.
In order to give as much notice as possible of this, we will notify you in writing if we become aware that a future Certificate will be affected in this way.