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Direct coverage
Cost & commission honesty
Low Commission Accident Management With No Hidden Fees
How non-fault accident management is paid for without charging you - and how CityGrip keeps credit hire, storage and referrals to the reasonable, market-rate test so there are no inflated charges, no claims-farming and no selling of your data.
- 24/7 UK dispatch
- £0 upfront cost
- Independent engineer
- Like-for-like replacement
24/7
UK response
Recovery dispatch and live claim handlers, 365 days a year.
Response
<60m
First contact SLA
Cost
£0
Upfront to driver
What does low-commission, no-hidden-fees accident management actually mean?
It means the non-fault driver pays nothing up front: recovery, secure storage, repair coordination, engineer inspection and a like-for-like replacement are recovered from the at-fault driver's insurer under the ordinary law of damages, not billed to you. 'Commission' in this industry is a referral payment passed between firms, not a charge you pay - but it can tempt some operators to inflate credit hire or storage or to sell your data. CityGrip keeps every charge to the reasonable-need and market-rate test (Dimond v Lovell, Lagden v O'Connor), refers injury claims only with your written consent on disclosed terms, and does not auction your details.
The honest model
How the work is funded without charging you
The phrase “low commission accident management” trips a lot of drivers up, because it sounds like there is a fee being negotiated down. There is not. In a genuine non-fault claim the practical costs of getting you and your vehicle back to normal are recovered from the driver who caused the crash - more precisely, from their insurer - under the ordinary English law of damages. The wrongdoer pays to restore the innocent party. That single principle, not a commission, is what funds the recovery, the storage, the engineer, the repair and the replacement vehicle.
So why does “commission” come up at all? Because behind the scenes this industry runs on referral payments between firms. A broker, a garage, a recovery operator or an accident manager can be paid for introducing a case - a credit-hire file here, an injury claim there. None of that is a charge the non-fault driver pays directly. The problem is that high referral commissions create the wrong incentives: they reward stretching a hire period, padding a storage bill, or selling your accident details on to whoever pays the most for a lead. A low-commission, transparent operator removes those incentives and keeps the file built the way the paying insurer - and a court - would expect to see it.
Principle 1
The at-fault insurer pays
Recovery, storage, repair coordination, engineer inspection and like-for-like replacement are recoverable heads of loss, paid by the third-party insurer under restitutio in integrum - not billed to you and not taken as a percentage of your settlement.
Principle 2
Every charge passes three tests
Was it genuinely needed, was the period reasonable, and was the rate at market level. A charge that cannot answer those three questions does not survive an insurer challenge - so it does not belong on your file.
Principle 3
No data auction, consent for injury
Your details are shared only where they are needed to run the claim. Personal-injury claims are referred to authorised partners only with your explicit written consent and on fees disclosed up front.
Line by line
Who actually pays for each part of your claim
This is the whole money picture on a transparent non-fault file. Each row names the item, who pays it, and the legal test that keeps the charge honest. Read it as a checklist: nothing here should ever appear as a fee, a deduction or a commission taken from you.
Line 01
Your accident management
- Who pays
- The at-fault driver's insurer
- The test that keeps it honest
- Restitutio in integrum - reasonable cost of putting you back
Recovery, secure storage, repair coordination, engineer inspection and like-for-like replacement are all recoverable heads of loss in a clear non-fault case. They are paid by the at-fault insurer under the ordinary law of damages, the principle that the wrongdoer restores the innocent party to the position they would have been in. That is why a properly run accident manager does not need to charge the non-fault driver up front: the cost is recovered from the party who caused it, not added as a fee on top of you.
Line 02
Your policy excess
- Who pays
- Nobody, when you claim direct
- The test that keeps it honest
- No first-party claim means no excess is triggered
An excess is the slice of a claim you agree to bear when you claim on your own comprehensive policy. In a clear non-fault claim handled directly against the third party, you never make a first-party claim, so no excess is triggered. If you have already paid an excess through your own insurer, it is recovered for you under their subrogation rights (Castellain v Preston (1883) 11 QBD 380) and refunded once the at-fault insurer pays. A transparent accident manager does not pocket that refund or treat it as commission.
Line 03
Your no-claims discount
- Who pays
- Unaffected in a true non-fault claim
- The test that keeps it honest
- Fault, not damage, drives the renewal step
Your no-claims discount measures consecutive claim-free years. In a clean non-fault claim run directly against the at-fault insurer, you do not record a fault claim, so your protected years are not stepped back and your renewal is not loaded for fault. Claiming on your own policy first can record a claim against you even when you were not to blame, until your insurer recovers. The honest route keeps the claim where it belongs - on the at-fault insurer's file, not yours.
Line 04
Credit hire (replacement vehicle)
- Who pays
- The at-fault insurer, at a defensible rate
- The test that keeps it honest
- Reasonable need, reasonable period, reasonable rate
Credit hire lets a non-fault driver who genuinely needs a car keep mobile while theirs is off the road, with the charges pursued against the at-fault insurer rather than billed to the driver. The rate is not a blank cheque: under Dimond v Lovell [2002] 1 AC 384 a claimant who could have funded a hire recovers only the Basic Hire Rate, while Lagden v O'Connor [2003] UKHL 64 lets a genuinely impecunious claimant recover the full credit-hire rate. Inflate the rate or the period and the insurer challenges it and the excess is disallowed.
Line 05
Storage charges
- Who pays
- The at-fault insurer, daily-logged
- The test that keeps it honest
- Market rate, mitigated, not run on unreasonably
Secure storage is recoverable while the engineer inspects and the insurer authorises repair or salvage. It must be logged daily, charged at a market compound rate and mitigated - you cannot let it run once liability is accepted and collection is offered. Storage piled up at an inflated daily figure for weeks beyond need is the classic charge that gets cut on assessment. A clean accident manager keeps storage to the reasonable-need window so the bill survives scrutiny and you are never chased for a shortfall.
Line 06
Recovery from the scene
- Who pays
- The at-fault insurer
- The test that keeps it honest
- Reasonable commercial rate; police-protocol on motorways
If the vehicle cannot be driven, recovery to a place of safety is recoverable. On motorways and trunk roads the National Highways and police-instructed operators charge fixed Home Office statutory rates under the National Recovery Standards. Off-network, any reputable operator at a reasonable commercial rate is recoverable. There is no honest reason to mark recovery up beyond the real invoice - the audit trail (scene location, destination compound, dated invoice) is exactly what the paying insurer checks before it settles.
Line 07
Personal injury (if any)
- Who pays
- Referred only, with your written consent
- The test that keeps it honest
- Authorised CMC or SRA solicitor; fee disclosed up front
Accident management is not legal advice and is not a personal-injury service. If you are injured, that claim is a separate matter handled by an FCA-authorised claims-management company or an SRA-regulated solicitor, and it is referred only with your explicit written consent. Any success fee on an injury claim is the solicitor's, disclosed to you in writing before you sign, capped by the Conditional Fee Agreements Order 2013. CityGrip does not take a hidden cut of your damages for making an introduction you did not agree to.
The referral economy, and how it bends a claim
When drivers ask for “low commission” accident management, they are reacting to something real, even if the word is borrowed from sales. In motor claims, commission is the referral fee that moves between businesses when a case is introduced from one to another. Historically those payments were large and opaque. Referral fees in personal-injury cases were banned outright by section 56 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) precisely because they were inflating the cost of claims and encouraging cases to be traded like a commodity. On the non-injury side, referral payments are still lawful, but they remain the thing that quietly shapes how aggressively a file is built.
Here is the mechanism. Because the bill for recovery, storage and credit hire is ultimately paid by the at-fault insurer rather than by you, the customer feels no immediate pain if a charge is high. A firm earning a fat referral commission on the onward credit-hire contract has every incentive to keep the hire running an extra fortnight, to choose a higher daily rate, or to let storage tick over. The driver does not notice - until the insurer disputes the charges, the recovery is reduced on assessment, and in the worst cases the driver is chased for a shortfall the “free” service never warned them about.
A low-commission approach simply refuses to play that game. CityGrip recovers the genuine, reasonable cost of your accident management from the at-fault insurer, keeps each charge inside the limits the courts have set, and treats a referral as something done in your interest with your consent - not as the product being sold. You are the client, not the lead.
Linked guidance: who pays for what · how credit hire works · injury claim referral (consent only).
The case law that keeps credit hire and storage reasonable
The reason an honest accident manager can promise no hidden shortfall is that the law already polices what is recoverable. Three authorities do the heavy lifting, and any charge that ignores them is a charge waiting to be reduced.
Dimond v Lovell [2002] 1 AC 384 established that a claimant who could have afforded to hire a car on ordinary terms recovers only the Basic Hire Rate - the spot rate a mainstream rental firm would have charged locally for an equivalent vehicle - not the marked-up credit-hire rate that bundles in extra services. Its purpose was to stop the non-fault driver being over-compensated, and it is the first lever an insurer pulls to cut an inflated hire bill.
Lagden v O’Connor [2003] UKHL 64 is the counterweight: a genuinely impecunious claimant - someone with no realistic means of funding a hire up front - can recover the full credit-hire rate, because they had no reasonable alternative. The burden of proving impecuniosity sits on the claimant, which is exactly why a careful file gathers that evidence rather than assuming it. Bee v Jenson [2007] EWCA Civ 923 confirmed that a replacement vehicle obtained through a credit arrangement is recoverable even where the claimant had other options available, provided the need and the reasonableness of the arrangement are made out.
Storage is governed by the duty to mitigate, traceable to The Liesbosch [1933] AC 449 and applied in motor claims through cases such as Bee v Jenson: charges run only while the vehicle reasonably needs to be stored, at a market compound rate, and must stop once the at-fault insurer accepts liability and offers collection. Put all of this together and the message is simple. Inflated credit hire, padded storage and stretched hire periods are not a clever way to extract more from an insurer - they are the charges most likely to be disallowed, and the ones that can rebound onto the driver. Keeping to the reasonable-need and market-rate test is not timidity; it is what makes a recovery hold.
Two very different businesses
A transparent accident manager versus a claims farm
They can look identical from the outside - both ask about your accident, both promise a free service. The difference is what they do with what you tell them, and where their money comes from.
Transparent accident manager
- Manages your case directly from first call to settlement.
- Recovers real, reasonable costs from the at-fault insurer.
- Keeps credit hire and storage to the reasonable-need, market-rate test.
- Refers injury claims only with your written consent, on disclosed fees.
- Shares your data only where the claim requires it.
Claims farm
- Its product is your data, captured to be sold on.
- Earns referral commission by auctioning your details as a lead.
- Has an incentive to inflate hire and storage it never has to defend.
- May pass you to firms you never chose and cannot easily contact.
- Often leaves you unsure who actually holds your claim.
Cold calls and unsolicited texts after a crash are a warning sign: a firm that already has your number without you giving it to them has usually bought it. CityGrip does not buy leads, does not cold-call accident victims, and does not sell what you tell us.
HOW CITYGRIP KEEPS IT CLEAN
03
Section 3 of the walkthrough.
What no hidden fees means in practice
CityGrip Accident Claims is a UK non-fault accident management business. That means we coordinate the practical side of your claim - 24/7 recovery, secure storage, repair coordination at PAS 125 / BS 10125 standard, independent engineer inspection, like-for-like replacement or credit hire, and direct correspondence with the at-fault driver’s insurer. In a clear non-fault case there is no upfront cost to you, because those costs are recovered from the at-fault insurer rather than charged to you.
We are not an FCA-regulated claims-management company and we are not solicitors. Accident management of this kind sits outside the FCA’s claims-management regulated perimeter, so it does not require FCA authorisation. We do not give legal advice, and we do not run personal-injury claims ourselves. Where you have been injured, that claim is referred - only with your explicit written consent - to an FCA-authorised claims-management company or an SRA-regulated solicitor who holds the right permissions, and any success fee on that injury claim is the solicitor’s, disclosed to you in writing before you commit.
The promise on cost is therefore concrete, not a slogan. We do not take a percentage of your vehicle settlement. We do not deduct a hidden commission from money owed to you. We keep credit hire, storage and recovery to the reasonable-need and market-rate test so the at-fault insurer pays in full and you are not left with a shortfall. And we do not sell your accident details: information is shared only where it is genuinely needed to progress your claim, in line with our privacy policy.
Where to go next: non-fault claims · credit hire vs courtesy car · accident recovery · start the accident form · contact the team.
Frequently asked questions
- What does 'low commission' actually mean in accident management?
- In this industry 'commission' usually means a referral payment passed between firms when a case is introduced - for example an accident manager or broker being paid for sending a credit-hire file or an injury claim to another company. It is not a fee the non-fault driver pays directly, but it can distort behaviour: it incentivises inflating hire periods, padding storage, or selling your details on. A low-commission, transparent approach means CityGrip recovers the real, reasonable cost of your accident management from the at-fault insurer, refers injury claims only with your written consent on disclosed terms, and does not sell your data to the highest bidder.
- Will CityGrip charge me a fee or take a percentage of my claim?
- No. In a clear non-fault claim there is no upfront cost to you for accident management - recovery, storage, repair coordination, engineer inspection and like-for-like replacement are recovered from the at-fault driver's insurer under the ordinary law of damages. We do not take a percentage of your vehicle settlement, and we do not deduct a hidden commission from any money owed to you. If a personal-injury claim is referred to a regulated partner with your consent, any success fee belongs to that solicitor and is disclosed to you in writing before you agree.
- Why do some accident managers inflate credit hire or storage charges?
- Because the bill is paid by the at-fault insurer rather than the customer, a minority of firms are tempted to stretch the hire period, charge above-market daily rates, or let storage run on. UK case law exists precisely to stop this: Dimond v Lovell limits the recoverable hire rate to the Basic Hire Rate where the claimant could have funded a hire, and the duty to mitigate (The Liesbosch [1933] AC 449) caps storage to the reasonable-need window. Inflated charges get challenged, reduced on assessment, and can leave a driver exposed to a shortfall. Keeping every charge to the reasonable-need and market-rate test protects you, not just the insurer.
- What is the difference between an accident manager and a 'claims farm'?
- A transparent accident manager coordinates the practical recovery of your vehicle and your losses and keeps you informed at every step. A 'claims farm' is a lead-generation operation whose product is your data: it captures your accident details, then sells them on to credit-hire companies, repairers or injury firms for a referral commission, often with little regard for whether the onward charges are reasonable. CityGrip manages your case directly, refers injury claims only with your written consent, and does not auction your personal data.
- Does claiming through CityGrip cost me my excess or no-claims discount?
- Not in a clean non-fault claim handled directly against the at-fault insurer. Because you are not making a first-party claim on your own policy, no excess is triggered and no fault claim is recorded against your no-claims discount. If you have already claimed through your own insurer and paid an excess, your insurer recovers it under subrogation (Castellain v Preston) and refunds it to you when the at-fault insurer settles - we do not treat that refund as our commission.
- Is CityGrip an FCA-regulated claims-management company?
- No. Accident management - recovery, secure storage, repair coordination, engineer inspection, like-for-like replacement and correspondence with the at-fault insurer - sits outside the FCA's claims-management regulated perimeter and does not require FCA authorisation. We do not provide legal advice and we do not handle personal-injury claims ourselves. Injury claims are referred, only with your explicit written consent, to FCA-authorised claims-management companies or SRA-regulated solicitors who hold the relevant permissions.
- Will you sell or share my accident details with other companies?
- No. We do not sell your personal data, and we do not pass your accident details to third parties for a referral commission. Information is shared only where it is necessary to run your claim - for example with the at-fault insurer, an independent engineer, or an approved repairer - and any referral of a personal-injury claim happens only with your explicit written consent. Our data handling is set out in our privacy policy.
- How do I know a charge on my file is reasonable?
- Every recoverable charge is measured against three questions the paying insurer will also ask: was it genuinely needed, was the period reasonable, and was the rate at market level. Recovery is evidenced by a dated invoice and scene-to-compound trail; storage is daily-logged at a market compound rate and mitigated; credit hire is supported by need, like-for-like specification and a rate that reflects Dimond v Lovell and Lagden v O'Connor. If a charge cannot pass those tests it does not belong on your file, and we do not put it there.
Talk to a real person
Transparent accident management, no hidden feesWe handle it end-to-end.
We recover the real cost of your non-fault claim from the at-fault insurer - no upfront charge, no inflated credit hire or storage, no selling your data. Personal injury claims are referred to an authorised partner only with your written consent and on fees disclosed up front.
Calls may be recorded for quality and compliance. We do not provide legal advice. Personal injury enquiries are referred only with your consent to authorised partners.
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London office
124 City Road
London, EC1V 2NX
Coverage
- Phone & accident form24 / 7
- Recovery dispatch24 / 7
- Repair coordinationMon-Sat 8:00 - 18:00
- SundaysEmergency only
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Tip: submit the accident form first - our team will call back with a reference and next steps.