Court Funds Office errors

A recent review of children’s damages awards held in court and administered by the Court Funds Office identified approximately 4,000 children’s accounts where the award had not been placed in an index tracker fund, as directed by the court. Instead, it was placed in an interest paying CFO investment account. The cases concerned are those where the award is more than £5,000 and the child was under 13 years of age when the investment should have been made. It is estimated that approximately 4,000 current and closed cases have been affected and that the full cost of corrective payments will be approximately £12.5m. This is out of a total of 90,000 current children’s cases holding nearly £650m in cash and investments, and 1.1 million closed cases.