- The NAO looked at how a number of compensation schemes are
now performing, some of which experienced significant issues in
their early stages
- Overall costs are still not certain but are estimated to
reach £14.9 billion across all schemes with £3.5 billion paid out
so far
- All open schemes have more to do to reach as many potentially
eligible people as possible and support them to make claims
A number of government compensation schemes have made progress in
handling claims and processing pay-outs to claimants but there is
still more to do to identify all those eligible and minimise
delays, says a new report by the National Audit Office (NAO), the
independent government spending watchdog.
In its new report, the NAO examined:
- The Windrush Compensation Scheme
- The Horizon Shortfall Scheme
- The Horizon Group Litigation Order Scheme
- The Horizon Overturned Convictions Scheme - merged into the
Horizon Convictions Redress Scheme in June 2025
- The Horizon Convictions Redress Scheme
- The Infected Blood Compensation Scheme
- The LGBT Financial Recognition Scheme
The report finds that by February 2026, government had paid
around £3.5 billion in total across all the schemes, with up to
another £11.4 billion potentially yet to be paid. The total
amount that departments anticipate will be paid out across all
the schemes examined totals nearly £14.9 billion. The Infected
Blood Compensation Scheme alone is expected to pay out £12.8
billion.
Some schemes have had to increase their estimates of the cost of
compensation schemes, reflecting revised estimates of numbers of
eligible people and increases to amounts awarded per claim due to
the harm caused.
Departments initially underestimated the rate at which schemes
would receive and process claims due to a range of reasons - and
this led to backlogs. These reasons included lower than expected
levels of awareness and trust in the schemes by potentially
eligible people and how long background information would take to
retrieve.
The report finds that additional efforts have been made to
identify and contact potential claimants. Three of the schemes
have extended the time periods over which they are open to new
claims, recognising that many eligible claimants had not applied
within the original deadlines. Four of the five schemes that
remain open have now received claims from two thirds or more of
the estimated number of eligible people, although some of these
estimates are subject to considerable uncertainty.
There remains substantial variation between and within each
scheme in the time taken to conclude claims, with some claimants
waiting over a year after they applied before receiving an offer
of compensation. All schemes, however, now offer interim payments
or fixed sums, which is helping to settle some claims in a more
timely manner.
For example, as at January 2026, fully assessed claims on the
Horizon Group Litigation Order Scheme were taking on average 147
working days to conclude, from the point at which all required
information had been received, whereas fixed sum claims were
taking 24 working days.
Organisations representing claimants meanwhile told us that there
is still too little transparency about how long claims are likely
to take, and that some schemes are not sufficiently independent.
, head of the NAO,
said:
“People who have experienced harm should be able to
expect a clear process for claiming compensation and no
unreasonable delay in processing their claim. There is clear
evidence that more recent compensation schemes have learned from
the experience of earlier schemes, helping reach more affected
people and speed up payments to those eligible.”
