Manage your Compensation Recovery Claims
Source: gov.uk (2025-05-19)

Service Standard report for DWP's Manage your Compensation Recovery Claims beta assessment

Service Standard assessment report

Manage your Compensation Recovery Claims

Previous assessment reports
- https://www.gov.uk/service-standard-reports/compensation-recovery-service
Service description

The Compensation Recovery Unit (CRU) team works with insurance companies, solicitors and citizens using DWP services, to identify and recover:
- amounts of social security benefits paid because of an accident, injury or disease, if a compensation payment has been made.
- costs incurred by NHS hospitals and Ambulance Trusts for treatment from injuries, from road traffic accidents and personal injury claims (Recovery of NHS Charges)
If following the relevant checks, it is determined that there is no benefit to recover, a “Nil Certificate of Charges” is sent to the compensator, and the case can be settled.

This Beta service extends upon digitising the claim registration journey in alpha by:
- digitising the compensator’s account registration journey
- creating a user interface for DWP agents to update claim details and complete associated claim tasks
- creating a technical solution of onboarding and consuming e-partner claim data which accounts for 80% of all claims
Service users

This service is for broadly two high level user groups:
- clerical Compensators who will be looking to register claims relating to a case to understand if there are any benefits that need to be recovered
- CRU Operational staff who will need to update individual claim details that sit within the new service
- there are also e-partner compensators, who send claims to CRU electronically by third party software. DWP onboard and consumes e-partner claim data through the new service. It is business as usual for e-partners in terms of how they submit claims with no change to that process. However, they do benefit from the significantly faster return of an electronic nil certificate following an overnight process.
Things the service team has done well:

The team has taken an iterative approach to interaction and content design, demonstrating a process of rapid testing and iteration.

The team has explored the service user groups extensively since the Alpha assessment which has highlighted varying needs and helped to shape the initial scope of this service.

The team have utilised all appropriate tools to iterate and make evidence based decisions when building and improving the service. Multiple professions across the multi-functional team utilise the performance framework to relate improvement work back to a set metric or KPI. Qualitative and Quantitative data is handled appropriately and securely, and the team is aware of GDPR and PII data handling policies. Appropriate MI tools are used depending on the task, both holistic (GA) and actual (MI) tools, the team is aware of cookie consent and the limitations. There are digital retention updates on the roadmap such as digital assistant, live chat or a variation.

1. Understand users and their needs

Decision

The service was rated green for point 1 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service: The team could explore how to engage with the citizens who have signed up to the service, to validate the hypothesis that they are looking for a similarly named MoJ portal

2. Solve a whole problem for users

Decision

The service was rated green for point 2 of the Standard.

3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channels

Decision

The service was rated green for point 3 of the Standard.

4. Make the service simple to use

Decision

The service was rated amber for point 4 of the Standard.
- during the assessment, we didn’t see evidence of:
- the service stopping public users registering. The team demonstrated awareness of this as an issue and investigation into the root cause is underway alongside plans to explore interstitial screens and improved signposting. The team should also consider eligibility questions towards the start of the service to stop public users registering.
5. Make sure everyone can use the service

Decision

The service was rated green for point 5 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service: • The team could regularly review where they’ve adapted GOV.UK Design System components, for example the use of the notification banner as a table, monitoring whether more appropriate alternatives emerge in the design system or across government.

6. Have a multidisciplinary team

Decision

The service was rated green for point 6 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service: Service Design resources are not currently noted within the multi-functional team. This professional expertise may be useful, particularly as the scope of the service is expanded, to ensure a joined-up service is created across different journeys.

7. Use agile ways of working

Decision

The service was rated green for point 7 of the Standard.

8. Iterate and improve frequently

Decision

The service was rated green for point 8 of the Standard.

9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy

Decision

The service was rated green for point 9 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service: It is advisable that the process to verify admin compensator is built before the existing email whitelisting process during admin user registration process is removed

10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data

Decision

The service was rated green for point 10 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service: consider starting funnels and completion rates after the eligibility and knockout sections of the journey to ensure you are measuring fully committed and eligible journeys.

11. Choose the right tools and technology

Decision

The service was rated green for point 11 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

Keep engaging with the DWP Strategic Reference Architecture Services and migrate to strategic solutions as when they become available

12. Make new source code open

Decision

The service was rated amber for point 12 of the Standard.

During the assessment, we didn’t see evidence of any code made open to DWP or to other repositories. Before the next assessment can you identify patterns / code (even if it is in devOps pipelines fragments) that can be made as open-source code.

13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns

Decision

The service was rated green for point 13 of the Standard.

14. Operate a reliable service

Decision

The service was rated green for point 14 of the Standard.

Next Steps

This service can now move into a public beta phase, subject to addressing the amber points within three months time and GDS spend approval.

This service now has permission to launch on a GOV.UK service domain with a beta banner. These instructions (https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/get-a-domain-name) explain how to set up your *.service.gov.uk domain.