Fentons becomes an ABS

Fentons Solicitors, one of the biggest claimant personal injury firms, has become an ABS today.

Karl Tonks, the president of APIL and a partner at the firm (pictured), is the COLP. Martin Loftus, partner and RTA specialist, is the COFA.

Fentons, based in Manchester and London, has over 250 staff. Along with personal injury, the firm also advises on human rights cases, professional negligence and private client.

Senior partner Kieran Maguire said: "I welcome the SRA’s granting of ABS status. We applied to become an ABS so that we could admit non-lawyer managers into the LLP.

"This decision will immediately facilitate the appointment of accounting, marketing, IT and HR professionals within our ownership structure and will allow us to continue our expansion."

Speaking at the APIL president’s lunch in London this week, Tonks said that it was a “huge personal regret” to him that only the spectre of judicial review proceedings from APIL that had persuaded the government to think again about the timetable for extending the RTA portal.

Responding to reports that the government was considering increasing the small claims limit to £15,000 for all cases, including personal injury, Tonks said: “I find it hard to accept that a responsible government would react in such an irrational and indiscriminate way to a legitimate legal challenge.

“I can only hope that the reports are unfounded, as such a move would amount to a side-swipe at injured people as punishment for an attempt to exercise our democratic right to scrutinise our government, which is a fundamental part of the rule of law.”

In a separate development, insurer Aviva has claimed that £1.5bn of “excess cost” could be cut from insurance premiums if insurers handled all claims directly.

Aviva said that whiplash claims added £118 to every motor insurance premium and 94 per cent of motorists blamed involvement of third parties for increased premiums.

Dominic Clayden, claims director at Aviva, said in the insurer’s response to the Ministry of Justice consultation on whiplash: “We are campaigning for a more efficient system that removes the ‘interested parties’ and requires people to deal directly with the insurer of the at-fault party.”