UK Special Account Rate: Pre-Judgment Interest on Special Damages

What Is the Special Account Rate?

The special account rate is the rate of interest payable on sums held in the Court Funds Office special account, and it is the conventional benchmark for pre-judgment interest on special damages in personal injury and clinical negligence claims.

The Difficulty with Published Rates

The rate itself is not published by the government in a single table; rather, it is updated through press releases. Practitioner texts such as Facts and Figures publish tables, but the difficulty is that turning those hard-copy tables into straightforward calculations in spreadsheets or completed schedules is time-consuming and error-prone, although there are, of course, some online calculators which do this and which are well known.

What This Calculator Provides

The calculator on this website produces those calculations, but combined with the other tools available on interest.law. For example, it always provides a clear breakdown table showing what rate is applied and between what periods, enabling transparency and allowing the rates and arithmetic to be checked in a way that is reliable and accurate.

Scenario Planning and Modelling

It also allows for accurate modelling and scenario planning. So for instance there is, in the case law, some controversy about when a half rate should be allowed and when a full rate should be allowed, and whether interest should run from the middle of the loss period or only after the loss has stopped accruing. If you are advising a client with relation to a personal injury special damages claim, this calculator allows you to play out both those scenarios and instantly see which approach produces the best outcome for your client.

Repeated Small Losses

It also enables instant calculations of regular, repeated small losses. So, for example, where a claimant has been paying £100 a fortnight towards physiotherapy, transport costs, gardening, or additional medication, the interest on each of those items can be calculated accurately using the repeated payments tool.

Multiple Heads of Loss

You can also add or remove multiple heads of loss, so it is possible, within a single calculation, to work out interest on head of loss A from 1 January, head of loss B from 1 March, and head of loss C from 1 July, all in one straightforward calculation.

For Those Preparing Schedules

In this way, those who produce their own schedules but wish to save themselves the fiddly and tedious exercise of working out interest on a range of different sums can do so quickly and reliably and produce schedules for client, opponents, JSMs and the Court, which cannot be challenged.

Sources

• Court Funds Office: Interest Rates
• Facts and Figures: Tables for the Calculation of Damages (Sweet & Maxwell)