- 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.
“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.”
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO