New research from the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) finds it now takes NHS Resolution more than two years on average to settle a clinical negligence claim, around 10 months longer than in 2013/14. The most severely injured wait longest: the highest-value claims now take more than eight years, almost two years longer than in 2013/14.

But NHS Resolution’s 2025/26 Annual Report shows a record 84% of clinical negligence claims were resolved without formal legal proceedings. If most claims are settling early, why are the averages going up?

Two numbers, one system

The figures aren’t contradictory, but they do measure different things: how long claims take to settle, and how many avoid formal proceedings altogether. There can be sound reasons why the most serious claims run long, because the full picture of an injury and future care needs may take years to emerge.

“There may in some cases be good reasons to wait longer, such as taking time to see how an injury evolves before assessing long term needs,” says Guy Forster, president of APIL. “However, there are instances where victims of negligence could be spared an unnecessarily long wait to receive justice.”

The headline figures don’t show how much of the increase is down to necessary delay and how much to delay that could have been avoided. That is the question worth asking of any individual claim.

A disagreement over what is holding claims up

The Department of Health and Social Care is considering its next steps on NHS spending on negligence, and APIL warns of what could follow.

“There is a threat of detrimental, radical reform to the compensation system coming down the line,” Forster says. “The evidence in APIL’s report shows that the answer always comes back to better patient safety, but the claims process could in some ways still be more efficient.”

That is why the causes of delay matter. For APIL, part of the answer lies in how claims are run in their early stages. “Over the past 10 years the path to justice has become more time-consuming,” Forster says. “It is well-established that legal costs, which are under ever-increasing scrutiny, are driven by delays.”

APIL wants “full compliance, from all parties” with the Pre-Action Protocol for Clinical Disputes, the steps expected before proceedings begin. It also wants amendments to strengthen letters of notification and templates showing effective correspondence, so that meaningful investigations take place at the earliest possible stage of a claim.

NHS Resolution points to different causes. It says progress depends on how quickly medical records, expert evidence and third-party information can be obtained, and on the information claimant representatives provide so that a claim can be valued.

Both explanations can be true of different claims. What matters is which one applies to the claim in front of you.

Which delays can be avoided?

Some delay cannot be hurried. A claim waiting for a medical prognosis to settle is waiting for something that cannot be rushed. A claim waiting for missing GP records, or for a second specialty identified only after the first report came back, is not.

Consider two claims that have each been open for three years.

Claim A: The claimant sustained a severe injury and their condition is still changing, so experts cannot yet say what long-term care they will need. Waiting is sensible, because settling now risks undervaluing the claim.

Claim B: The liability evidence is ready, but a key set of records arrived late and a further specialty was identified only after the initial report was obtained.

Both claims are the same age, but only Claim B was held up by something that could have been addressed earlier.

For solicitors and claims professionals, three practical checks can help:

• Request records as soon as the claim is accepted, then check them. Records from GPs, trusts, community and specialist providers are often held separately, and gaps are easier to resolve before an expert has relied on an incomplete set.
• Map the likely disciplines before instructing anyone. Even a single delayed-diagnosis claim can raise questions across several specialties, from the initial assessment to how test results were handled and what earlier intervention would probably have changed. A missing specialty found after reports are in means more evidence and a longer timetable.
• Build a chronology early. It shows the sequence of events and apparent gaps, and lets you put focused questions to experts on breach and causation.

Defendants can help too. Prompt investigation and early decisions on liability make the real points of disagreement clear sooner, and where liability is not in doubt, an early admission or interim payment can keep a claim moving.

The question to ask of every claim

Average settlement times will keep making headlines, but an average can’t tell you why any one claim is taking as long as it is. That is the part practitioners can influence. For each open claim, the useful question is simple: what is it waiting for, and could that have been dealt with sooner?

At UKExpertMedical, we provide medical expert instruction from our nationwide panel, record retrieval and review, and services including pagination, collation and chronology, identifying gaps and issues early. If you’d like to discuss a current or upcoming case, please get in touch.

Sources: APIL, “Victims of clinical negligence wait longer than ever for justice” (22 September 2026) and Clinical Negligence: The reality behind the myths (2026); Law Society Gazette, “‘Deny and delay’ blamed for surge in clinical negligence waiting times” (September 2026), including NHS Resolution’s response; NHS Resolution, Annual Report and Accounts 2025/26.