After numerous legal reviews and enquiries both to the financial ombudsman and Markel, we are now at the point where we believe the DLA have exhausted almost all options as an association to pursue business interruption claims that have so far not been honoured, the stance of the under-writers has been particularly disappointing given the amount of work and information we provided and supported for the FCA legal review.
As things stand with Markel, claims are not being considered without specific confirmation from local authorities that businesses were ordered to lock down in your area of work during the period from March 23rd to June 8th (the date when NHS dentistry began its return to work), we know from our own experiences that confirmation from local authorities has been virtually impossible to get, with many local authorities instead referring to the national policy or indeed referring businesses to their Covid-19 response online; both of which are not acceptable.
In recent weeks the DLA requested the Depart of Health to provide a legal statement to support dental laboratories, which provided evidence of dental labs being forced to close down due to Chief Dental Officers office and Public Health England instructions in March 2020. Following initial consideration with NHS Legal, this request has been turned down. As a result of this decision, the DLA are once again working with Alex Norris MP, Shadow Minister for Health with regards to the business interruption claims and to seek Ministerial consideration of the request to support dental laboratories who are applying to their insurer for business interruption claims.
Whilst the DLA are still working hard on this problem, we do think that as an association we are getting very close to the end of our options, and that we feel it is only right that we share this with you. We still encourage all members who have not had satisfactory responses to contact the FCA and share your experience with them following the FCA legal review.
We’d also like to thank all those members that have been keeping us in the loop with their claims, this has been hugely helpful to our technical team.
Please be assured if you are still waiting for a Markel payment, we haven’t given up on this and we will keep on fighting but everyone at the DLA felt it was important to manage everyone’s expectations.
Kind regards,
The DLA Membership Team