What If I Was Attacked and Want to Claim CICA?
Being the victim of a violent attack is one of the most traumatic experiences a person can go through. The physical injuries may be serious and lasting. The psychological impact — fear, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, a changed relationship with the world and with other people — can be profound and prolonged. And unlike most personal injury situations, where there is an insurer to claim against and a legal process that is relatively straightforward to initiate, the victim of a violent crime often faces the additional frustration of knowing that the person who hurt them has no money, no insurance, and no means of paying compensation — or may never even have been caught.
This is the situation that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme exists to address. If you have been the victim of a violent crime in Scotland and you have suffered physical or psychological injuries as a result, you may be entitled to compensation through the scheme administered by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority — CICA. You do not need to know who attacked you. You do not need the attacker to have been convicted or even arrested. You do not need to sue anyone or go to court. The scheme provides government-funded compensation for innocent victims of violent crime regardless of whether the perpetrator has been brought to justice.
This essay explains what CICA is, who can apply, what the scheme covers, how the application process works, what to do if your application is refused or the award is too low, and the specific practical steps you should take if you have been attacked and want to make a claim in Scotland.
What Is CICA and How Does the Scheme Work?
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority is a UK government body that administers the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme — a statutory scheme that provides lump sum compensation payments to people who have been physically or psychologically injured as a direct result of a violent crime in Great Britain. The scheme applies in Scotland, England, and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own separate scheme.
The scheme is funded by the taxpayer — it is not an insurance scheme and there is no insurer involved. It represents the state's recognition that innocent victims of violent crime deserve financial support even when the perpetrator cannot be made to pay. The scheme has existed in various forms since 1964, making it one of the oldest victim compensation arrangements in the world.
The current scheme is governed by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 2012. It operates on a tariff system — a fixed schedule of awards for different categories and severities of injury — rather than the individualised assessment used in civil personal injury litigation. This means that the amount of compensation is determined by which tariff band the injury falls into, rather than by the specific circumstances of the individual claimant's loss.
The scheme is administered as an application process rather than a litigation process. There is no court, no judge, no hearing in the conventional sense at the initial stage. You fill in an application, CICA investigates it, and CICA makes a decision on eligibility and the appropriate tariff award. If you disagree with the decision, you can ask for a review, and if you still disagree after the review, you can appeal to the First-tier Tribunal.
Who Can Apply to CICA in Scotland?
To be eligible to apply to CICA for compensation following an attack in Scotland, a number of conditions must be met. Understanding these conditions before you apply — and ideally before you complete the application form — will help you present your case in the most effective way and avoid the pitfalls that cause many applications to be refused.
The injury must have been caused by a crime of violence. The scheme covers a wide range of violent crimes including physical assault, sexual assault, rape, domestic violence, robbery with violence, and any other offence involving deliberate physical force used against you. The crime does not need to have resulted in a conviction. The attacker does not even need to have been identified. What matters is that you suffered an injury as a direct result of a criminal act of violence.
The crime must have taken place in Great Britain — Scotland, England, or Wales. If you were attacked abroad, the CICA scheme does not apply, though separate arrangements may be available depending on the country where the attack occurred.
You must have reported the crime to the police as soon as reasonably practicable after it occurred. This is one of the most important eligibility requirements and one that causes significant difficulty for many applicants. CICA will contact the police to verify that a report was made, and if no report was made, the application may be refused. There are limited exceptions — where the victim was a child, where the attacker was a family member and reporting was not safe or reasonable, or where there were genuinely exceptional reasons why reporting was impossible — but the general rule is clear. Report the attack to the police as soon as you can.
You must have cooperated fully with the police in their investigation of the crime. CICA will check with the police whether you cooperated, and a failure to cooperate — including refusing to give a statement, withdrawing a complaint, or failing to attend court proceedings as a witness — can lead to a reduction or refusal of compensation.
Your own conduct before, during, and after the incident is relevant. CICA can reduce or refuse compensation where the applicant's conduct — including excessive alcohol consumption, provocation of the attacker, or engaging in a mutual fight — contributed to the circumstances of the attack. This is one of the most significant ways in which the CICA scheme differs from a civil personal injury claim. In a civil claim, contributory negligence reduces the award proportionally. In the CICA scheme, conduct issues can result in a more significant reduction or even complete refusal of the award.
Your criminal record is also relevant. The scheme contains provisions allowing CICA to reduce or withhold compensation where the applicant has unspent criminal convictions. The more serious the unspent convictions, the greater the potential impact on the award. This is one of the most controversial aspects of the scheme and has been widely criticised on the grounds that it penalises crime victims for their own past rather than focusing on the harm they have suffered. However, it remains part of the current scheme and must be taken into account when assessing eligibility.
The Two Year Time Limit: Do Not Delay
Applications to CICA must be made within two years of the date of the incident that caused the injury. This is the CICA scheme's equivalent of the limitation period in civil litigation, and it is strictly enforced. If you apply more than two years after the attack, your application may be refused on the grounds that it is out of time.
There is a discretion to accept late applications in exceptional circumstances — where it was not reasonably practicable to apply within two years, and where it is in the interests of justice to allow the late application. But this discretion is exercised sparingly, and relying on it is a significant risk. Do not assume that your exceptional circumstances will be accepted — seek legal advice and apply as soon as possible.
For victims who were children at the time of the attack, the two year period runs from the date the victim turns eighteen, not from the date of the attack. This means that a child attacked at the age of ten has until their twentieth birthday to apply — but again, applying promptly is always better than waiting.
For cases involving sexual abuse or other historical offences that were not reported or dealt with at the time, the date of application provisions are more complex and require careful legal analysis. If you are considering a CICA application for a historical attack or abuse, seek specialist legal advice on the time limit position before doing anything else.
What Does the Scheme Pay For?
The CICA scheme pays compensation under three main heads — the tariff award for the injury itself, loss of earnings, and special expenses.
The tariff award is the central element of most CICA applications. The scheme operates a fixed tariff of injury descriptions divided into twenty-five bands, with Band 1 paying one thousand pounds at the lower end and Band 25 paying two hundred and fifty thousand pounds at the upper end. Each type of injury is assigned to a specific tariff band based on its nature and severity.
The tariff covers a very wide range of physical and psychological injuries. Minor bruising or lacerations at the lower bands. Fractures, lacerations requiring hospital treatment, and moderate psychological injury in the middle bands. Loss of a limb, serious brain injury, severe psychological injury, and other catastrophic outcomes in the higher bands. Sexual assault and rape attract specific tariff awards that reflect the serious and lasting psychological harm these offences cause.
Where multiple injuries have been sustained in the same attack, the scheme awards the full tariff for the most serious injury, thirty percent of the tariff for the second most serious injury, and fifteen percent of the tariff for the third most serious. Injuries beyond the third are not separately compensated.
The minimum award under the current 2012 scheme is one thousand pounds — Band 1 on the tariff. Applications where the likely award would be below one thousand pounds are not accepted under the scheme. This threshold means that minor injuries that would fall below Band 1 do not qualify for CICA compensation, even where all other eligibility criteria are met.
Loss of earnings is the second head of compensation. The scheme compensates for loss of earnings beyond an initial twenty-eight week period — the first twenty-eight weeks of any loss of earnings are not recoverable. After twenty-eight weeks, the scheme compensates net earnings up to a maximum of one and a half times the median gross weekly earnings published by the Office for National Statistics at the time of assessment. This cap means that higher earners will not be fully compensated for their actual loss, which is a significant limitation compared to civil litigation.
Special expenses — the third head — cover costs including medical treatment not available through the NHS, aids and adaptations required because of the injury, care costs where the injury causes a need for personal care, and other reasonable out-of-pocket expenses directly attributable to the injury.
Psychological Injuries: An Important Category
CICA covers psychological injury as well as physical injury, and in many cases involving violent attacks the most significant and lasting harm is psychological rather than physical. Post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, clinical depression, and other psychological conditions caused by a violent attack are all potentially compensable under the scheme.
Psychological injury is assessed against the same tariff system as physical injury. The scheme divides psychological injury into four categories — minor, moderately disabling, significantly disabling, and severely disabling — each assigned to a specific tariff band. The assessment of psychological injury requires medical evidence from a psychiatrist or psychologist confirming the diagnosis, its severity, and its attribution to the attack.
Where both physical and psychological injuries have been suffered in the same attack, both are included in the tariff calculation — the full tariff for the most serious injury and the reduced percentages for the additional injuries as described above.
For victims of sexual assault and rape, the scheme recognises the specific and serious psychological harm caused by these offences through dedicated tariff entries that reflect the severity of the trauma involved.
How to Apply: The Process
Applications to CICA are made online through the CICA website at gov.uk/claim-compensation-criminal-injury. The application form requires detailed information about the incident — where and when it occurred, what happened, how you were injured, and what the injuries were. It also requires your national insurance number, details of any police report and the reference number, information about any criminal proceedings, and details of your injuries including any medical treatment received.
CICA will obtain information from the police about the incident and from your medical records about the injuries. They will assess the application against the eligibility criteria and the tariff, and they will write to you with their decision — either an award, a partial award where conduct issues lead to a reduction, or a refusal setting out the reasons.
The process can take many months — sometimes well over a year — from application to decision, particularly in complex cases involving serious injuries or contested eligibility issues. During this period, CICA may request further information, medical reports, or other documentation. Responding promptly to these requests and ensuring that the medical evidence is comprehensive and clearly linked to the attack will help to progress the application.
Legal representation is not required to make a CICA application — the form can be completed without a solicitor. However, legal advice and assistance is strongly recommended given the complexity of the scheme's eligibility rules, the importance of presenting the application in the most effective way, and the significant financial difference that effective representation can make to the outcome. A specialist solicitor who handles CICA claims regularly will know how to address potential eligibility issues, how to ensure that the full range of injuries is captured in the application, and how to challenge inadequate decisions through the review and appeal process.
What to Do If Your Application Is Refused or the Award Is Too Low
CICA decisions are not final. If your application is refused, or if the award made is lower than you believe it should be, you have two further stages of challenge available — a review and an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal.
A review is conducted by a different CICA caseworker who looks at the application afresh. The review is not merely a rubber stamp of the original decision — it is a genuine reconsideration on the merits. You can submit additional evidence, additional representations, and additional arguments at the review stage, and the review decision may uphold the original decision, improve the award, or in some cases reduce it if the reviewer identifies issues that the original decision-maker overlooked.
If the review decision is also unsatisfactory, you can appeal to the First-tier Tribunal — the Criminal Injuries Compensation Chamber. The tribunal is an independent judicial body that hears appeals from CICA decisions. Appeals are heard by a tribunal judge, sometimes with medical or other expert panel members, and the tribunal can substitute its own decision for CICA's. The tribunal process is more formal than the initial application stage and benefits significantly from specialist legal representation.
The time limits for requesting a review and lodging an appeal are strict — reviews must be requested within ninety days of the initial decision, and appeals must be lodged within ninety days of the review decision. These deadlines must be adhered to, and any difficulty in meeting them should be communicated to CICA or the tribunal immediately with an explanation.
The Relationship Between CICA and a Civil Claim
Where the perpetrator of the attack is known and has been convicted, a civil claim against the perpetrator is theoretically possible alongside or instead of a CICA application. In practice, most perpetrators of violent crime have no assets and no insurance, making a civil claim futile even where it is legally available. The CICA scheme exists precisely because civil recovery from the perpetrator is in most cases impossible.
Where civil compensation is recovered from any source — a civil claim against the perpetrator, an order for compensation in criminal proceedings, or compensation from any other source — the amount recovered will be taken into account by CICA in assessing the scheme payment, to avoid double recovery. The CICA scheme is designed to compensate where no other compensation is available — it is not intended to supplement compensation that has already been received from another source.
A criminal compensation order made by the sentencing court against a convicted perpetrator also affects the CICA position. Where a compensation order is made, CICA will deduct the amount of the order from any scheme payment. Where the compensation order is not enforced — because the perpetrator does not pay — CICA's position depends on the specific circumstances and requires legal advice.
Domestic Violence and CICA
Domestic violence is one of the most common categories of violent crime giving rise to CICA applications, and it presents specific considerations that make the scheme's requirements more complex in this context.
The requirement to report to the police is particularly challenging for domestic violence victims, who may face serious safety risks if they report the abuse while still in the relationship, or who may have reported and then withdrawn the complaint because of ongoing fear or coercion. CICA recognises these difficulties and the reporting requirement is applied more flexibly in domestic violence cases — the reasons for any delay in reporting, or for withdrawing a complaint, are taken into account in assessing eligibility.
Where the attacker was living in the same household as the victim at the time of the attack — as is the case in many domestic violence situations — a specific provision in the scheme requires that CICA be satisfied that the attacker will not benefit from the compensation award. This provision is designed to prevent a situation where compensation paid to a victim of domestic abuse effectively passes to the abuser through the operation of household finances. CICA will consider the living arrangements and the relationship between the parties in assessing whether this provision applies.
Practical Steps After an Attack in Scotland
If you have been attacked in Scotland and are considering a CICA application, the practical steps are clear and time-sensitive.
Report the attack to the police as soon as possible if you have not already done so. A police report is an essential prerequisite for a CICA application in most cases. Contact Police Scotland — either by calling 101 for non-emergency reporting or 999 if you are in immediate danger — and make a full report of what happened.
Seek medical treatment promptly and ensure that the injuries are properly documented in medical records. The medical evidence of your injuries — the contemporaneous records made by the doctor or nurse who treated you — is the primary evidence of the nature and severity of the harm you suffered.
Preserve any other evidence of the attack — photographs of injuries, torn or damaged clothing, screenshots of threatening messages, records of any previous incidents involving the same perpetrator. This evidence supports both the police investigation and the CICA application.
Contact a specialist CICA solicitor as soon as possible. The two year time limit begins from the date of the attack and cannot be relied upon as a comfortable margin — applying early gives the best chance of a successful outcome and leaves time to gather evidence, address any eligibility issues, and prepare a comprehensive application.
Do not discuss the details of the attack or your injuries on social media. CICA caseworkers may review public social media activity, and posts that appear inconsistent with the injuries claimed or the psychological impact described can affect the credibility of the application.
The Bottom Line
Being attacked is not your fault. The physical and psychological harm you have suffered deserves to be recognised and compensated, regardless of whether the perpetrator has been caught, prosecuted, or convicted. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme exists to ensure that innocent victims of violent crime in Scotland are not left without any financial redress simply because the person who hurt them cannot pay.
The scheme has strict eligibility rules, a two year time limit, and a tariff-based compensation structure that differs significantly from civil personal injury litigation. Navigating it effectively requires understanding those rules, presenting the application comprehensively, and being prepared to challenge inadequate decisions through the review and appeal process.
Seek specialist legal advice promptly. Report the attack to the police if you have not done so. Gather your medical evidence. And do not let the two year deadline pass without taking action — because the compensation the scheme provides, while it cannot undo what happened to you, represents a formal recognition by the state of Scotland that you are a victim who deserves support.