JOHN CRAWFORD


JOHN trained at Saltcoats Burgh in the late 60s. After a decade he moved to PD Beatwaste Ltd/ Wimpey Waste Management Ltd. He then joined the Civil Engineering Dept at Strathclyde University before posts at Renfrew, Hamilton, Inverness and


East Ayrshire Councils. A Fellow of CIWM, he served on their Scottish Centre Council from 1988-2009. He is a Fellow of the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland and was their President between 1991-92.


Insurance:


I WAS delighted to read in June's Skip Hire & Waste Magazine of Hull City Council reporting ‘a dramatic drop in insurance claims’ after fitting hard disk recording cameras to their RCVs. Before this technology was available, our businesses in both the public and private sector were sitting ducks for the ‘no win: no fee’ industry.


Our industry is full of pitfalls including exposure to insurance claims. Many years ago, we had to restrict our refuse collectors going into private property due to claims such as "My kid’s bike was missing in our garden after the binmen were here", or "There’s a bad scratch/dent on the car that could only have been caused by the dustmen..."


Several decades ago, there was a well-publicised case where a farmer claimed an incinerator in his neighbourhood had made his livestock ill and sued them in the High Court.


I was well into the last decade of my full- time working life before I fully understood how the insurance industry works. I led the Department’s Risk Management Group and was lucky to have the guidance of a colleague who’d spent a lot of his


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what does it claim to deliver?


previous career in the insurance industry. He explained that he starting point was for the Council’s insurers to look at the claim, estimate the maximum value of any settlement and the legal costs of defending it. If the latter was greater than the former, then they’d simply try to negotiate a deal that was lower than their estimate of the settlement award. That way, they’d save some money. It didn’t really matter all that much to them as the costs of the settlement would simply be added to our next year’s premium, and there were only a few insurers that would take on councils as clients. The bottom line was that if the Council’s premium was £3m this year, and our insurers had to pay out £3.5m in claims, then next year’s premium would be £4m!


And this is fertile ground for the ‘no win: no fee’ industry. They know how claims are assessed and simply exploit the situation. After all, if somebody is claiming around £1,000, saying "The Council’s dustcart hit my car", will the Council’s insurers be all that bothered to challenge the claim?


Several decades ago, there was a well-publicised case where a farmer claimed an incinerator in his neighbourhood had made his livestock ill and sued them in the High Court. As


the defence costs grew, the company’s insurers began to get cold feet and proposed a settlement but were told to carry on regardless. Fortunately, the case resulted in the farmer being criticised for poor husbandry.


So well done Hull City Council. If it were down to me, I’d take it further by suggesting legislation so that the legal costs of any ‘no win: no fee’ case are pegged at a maximum of 5% of the total amount awarded, as sometimes the ‘legal fees’ are as much as, if not more than, the claimant receives. It would stop a lot of these companies who are exploiting the insurance industry’s methods for their own gain and help keep premiums down.


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