It was founded in 2000 to offer injury victims access to justice in the wake of the Woolf reforms which saw the government withdraw legal aid for personal injury cases.
Before 1998, personal injury victims had the option to claim compensation using legal aid, which was also available for a variety of other types of civil litigation.
When the Woolf reforms came into effect, the concept of ‘no win no fee’ (the colloquial name for the Conditional Fee Agreement or CFA) was born.
Now, if somebody is injured through no fault of their own, whether it be in a car crash, an accident at work or a slip, trip or fall in a public place, they can instruct a lawyer to pursue their compensation claim for them. The no win no fee agreement means that there is no risk to the applicant: if they win, the losing defendant pays their cost, if they lose the case themselves, their solicitor writes off his legal costs.
Accident Advice Helpline came into being at the advent of no-win, no-fee. As legal aid was phased out for personal injury cases, the government also stopped allocating resources to the promotion of this legal right. This is where claims management companies like AAH took up the slack in order to promote the service which was available to personal injury victims.
Originally based in the West End with just a handful of employees, the company first moved to Golders Green and then to their own larger premises in Stanmore, on the outer fringes of North-West London.
In its early days, the company mainly offered services to victims of road traffic accidents who wished to make personal injury claims for afflictions such as whiplash.
Now boasting a workforce of over 150, Accident Advice Helpline caters for clients wishing to make any type of personal injury compensation claim: everything from accidents at work to slips and trips, vis less common claims such as sports injuries and holiday accident claims.
The company is endorsed by Esther Rantzen, well known as a champion of consumer rights and a prominent campaigner for access to justice. A former presenter of BBC TV’s That’s Life! And founder of the children’s charity Childline, she has been a prominent figure in the British media for well over thirty years. She has been with the company since 2003.