Violent crime victims in Tayside and Fife have been awarded £6.2 million compensation in just two years.
Residents in Fife received the biggest pay-outs with 214 awards in the KY postcode area totalling £1.65m in 2012-13 and 144 totalling £1.4m in 2013-14.
One Tayside lawyer has called for the entire application process to be reviewed after describing it as “slow”: “arduous” and “cumbersome”.
The figures showed there were 210 awards totalling £1.16m in 2012-13 in the DD postcode area and 108 totalling £1.1m in the next 12 months.
The PH postcode area had the lowest total, with £428,209 to 79 people in 2012-13 rising to 52 awards totalling £621,465 the following year.
The figures were released by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority following a freedom of information request by The Courier.
The list of payouts includes compensation for injuries such as £175,000 for serious brain damage, £27,000 for the loss of an eye and £1,800 for a collapsed lung.
Gary Mannion from Thorntons specialises in personal injury work and his caseload varies from complex cases to straightforward claims.
He said: “The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (Cica) is a government-funded scheme to compensate blameless victims of violent crime.
“The claims process however is slow, arduous and the level of compensation awarded will, for the majority of cases, not be reflective of the injuries sustained.”
Mr Mannion said that from the initial application to an award of compensation, a claimant can expect at least a 12 month turnaround: “Once the claimant has managed to navigate their way through the lengthy application form, it will then take a number of weeks for the Cica to acknowledge the application.
“The Cica will then make inquiries with Police Scotland to confirm that the crime was immediately reported to the police (although the person responsible for the crime does not necessarily have to be prosecuted by the procurator fiscal). The victim will then have to consent to the recovery of medical evidence of their injuries (usually a report from their treating doctor) in order for their award of compensation to be assessed.”
A spokesman for Cica said: “Although we aim to make compensation payments as quickly as possible, we have a duty to the taxpayer to investigate claims properly while ensuring that the applicant gets the level of compensation they deserve.”