The £20 Million Legacy: Valuing Human Life in the Wake of the Manchester Arena Bombing

On May 22, 2017, a suicide bombing at Manchester Arena claimed the lives of 22 people and injured hundreds more. The attack was one of the deadliest terrorist incidents in the UK in recent years. In December 2025, the UK High Court approved a landmark settlement of £19,928,150 for 16 claimants who were children at the time of the attack.

However, these 16 cases are part of a much larger global settlement reached on 16 December 2025. This broader agreement addresses a further 352 claims brought by adult survivors and the families of the 22 people who lost their lives. While the financial details for these additional 352 claimants remain confidential, the global nature of the settlement underscores the scale and seriousness of the claims arising from the attack.

Paid under a global settlement involving venue operators and security providers and relevant policing bodies, this payout marks a milestone in accountability. It follows a public inquiry that identified "serious shortcomings" and missed opportunities to prevent the tragedy.

The individual compensation amounts – ranging from £2,770 for less severe cases to over £11.4 million for the most affected – raise a difficult question in threat assessment: How do we quantify the “cost” of a human life? This article examines how the legal system and economic models like the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) determine these figures, and why the true value of life must be found in proactive prevention.

The Manchester Arena Compensation: A Closer Look

The £20 million settlement arises from civil claims brought against the organisations responsible for the safe and secure operation of the Manchester Arena. The Public Inquiry, chaired by Sir John Saunders and concluded in 2023, identified a series of security failings that increased vulnerability at the venue.

Key findings included:

• Missed opportunities: Security staff did not act on reports from members of the public who raised concerns about the attacker’s behaviour and the presence of a large backpack.

• Monitoring gaps: The inquiry identified limitations in CCTV coverage, including a monitoring blind spot in the area where the attacker remained prior to the attack.

• Training deficiencies: Security personnel were not adequately trained to recognise or respond to hostile reconnaissance or suspicious behaviour.

The 16 court-approved settlements involve claimants who sustained severe physical injuries or significant psychological harm, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As several claimants were children at the time of the attack or lacked legal capacity, the court reviewed the settlements in detail to ensure that the awards were appropriate and sufficient to meet long-term or lifelong care needs.

These proceedings sit alongside other legal outcomes arising from the attack. In November 2024, survivors Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve were awarded damages in a civil harassment claim against an individual who falsely alleged the bombing was a hoax. Separately, some victims have pursued compensation through the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, which provides tariff-based awards (up to £500,000) to victims of violent crime, subject to statutory limits that may not reflect the scale of harm in the most serious cases.

From a threat assessment perspective, these compensation outcomes illustrate the downstream consequences of security failures. Large venues and events represent attractive targets for mass-casualty attacks, and the inquiry’s findings highlight the importance of effective risk assessment, information sharing, staff training, and monitoring arrangements. The scale of civil liability faced by SMG Europe also reinforces the role of accountability in driving improvements in protective security across the events and venues sector.

How Human Life is Valued Under UK Law

In UK personal injury law, compensation (referred to as damages) is not an arbitrary figure, but a structured calculation intended to place the injured person, as far as possible, in the position they would have been in had the injury not occurred. In cases such as the Manchester Arena claims, damages are typically divided into two principal categories:

• General Damages: These address non-financial harm, including pain, suffering, and loss of amenity (for example, reduced ability to carry out daily activities or participate in work or leisure). Awards are guided by the Judicial College Guidelines, which set bracketed ranges based on injury type and severity, informed by precedent. For instance, severe brain injuries might warrant £282,010 to £403,990, while loss of a limb could range from £97,980 to £137,470. Psychological injury, prevalent in terrorism cases, is assessed through medical evidence and expert psychiatric reports.

• Special Damages: These cover quantifiable financial losses arising from the injury, including past and future medical treatment, rehabilitation, care and support needs, loss of earnings, and adaptations such as specialist equipment or housing modifications. In the Manchester Arena case, the highest awards are likely to have been driven by actuarial projections of long-term or lifelong care requirements for those with severe injuries. These calculations take account of life expectancy, inflation, discount rates, and future cost assumptions.

Settlements may be reached through negotiation or require court approval. Where claimants are minors or lack capacity, judicial scrutiny is applied to ensure that awards are reasonable and properly structured to meet long-term needs.

Alongside civil litigation, victims of terrorism may also seek compensation through statutory schemes. In the UK, this includes the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority and, for incidents abroad, the reformed Victims of Overseas Terrorism Compensation Scheme introduced in 2020. These schemes provide tariff-based awards intended to offer timely support, but they are subject to caps and standardised limits that may not fully reflect long-term or complex harm, particularly in cases involving severe psychological injury.

While these mechanisms provide essential financial support, they also illustrate a structural limitation. Monetary awards are designed to fund care, treatment, and loss, rather than to represent the value of a life itself. For families of those killed, statutory bereavement awards serve as formal recognition within the legal framework, but they are not intended to quantify the personal or social impact of loss.

The Economic Lens: Value of a Statistical Life (VSL)

Beyond individual compensation claims, governments use the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) – referred to in UK appraisal guidance as the Value of a Prevented Fatality (VPF) – to support policy and investment decisions. These values are used to assess whether the cost of safety measures is proportionate to the reduction in mortality risk they deliver. Importantly, VSL does not represent the value of a specific life, but the value society places on reducing small risks of death across a population.

In the UK, departments such as the Department for Transport apply VPF estimates in transport and infrastructure appraisals. These values typically fall in the low-to-mid millions of pounds per prevented fatality, depending on the appraisal year and policy context.

VSL estimates are derived using several established methods, including:

• Revealed preference approaches, such as labour-market studies that examine wage premiums associated with higher occupational risk.

• Stated preference methods, which use surveys to assess individuals’ willingness to pay for small reductions in mortality risk, often producing higher values for risks perceived as involuntary or catastrophic.

• Human capital approaches, based on lifetime earnings, which are now used less frequently due to their tendency to undervalue children, older people, and unpaid work.

In health policy, the UK commonly relies on Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs), with NHS decision thresholds typically in the range of £20,000–£30,000 per QALY. Comparatively, US estimates range from $7-12 million, reflecting higher GDP.

In threat assessment and protective security, VSL-type values support cost-benefit analysis of counter-terrorism measures, helping decision makers compare the cost of interventions against expected reductions in harm.

For example, a venue operator considering the installation of enhanced screening and monitoring measures may estimate that the intervention reduces the probability of a fatal attack by a small but measurable amount over its expected life. If the measure costs £5 million to install and operate over ten years and is assessed to reduce expected fatalities by three over that period, the implied cost per prevented fatality would be approximately £1.7 million. Where this falls within or below the relevant VSL or VPF range used in public appraisal, the investment may be considered proportionate.

However, these models are less suited to low-probability, high-impact events such as mass-casualty attacks, where impacts are non-marginal and extend beyond mortality alone. This limitation has prompted ongoing debate about how best to assess and prioritise investment in protective security.

The True Cost of Inaction

The Manchester Arena bombing demonstrates how threat assessment failures increase human costs. The attacker’s radicalisation, including overseas links to Libyan networks, and failures in on-site security arrangements highlight the need for integrated intelligence handling and venue-specific risk protocols.

The financial consequences extend beyond individual compensation. The £20 million civil settlement is accompanied by the public inquiry’s reported £31 million cost, alongside wider economic impacts associated with long-term healthcare, ongoing support needs, loss of productivity, and effects on the local events and tourism sectors.

Placing monetary values on harm reflects how risk is managed within public policy and organisational decision-making. Budgetary decisions routinely involve trade-offs between security measures, social services, and economic priorities. While these valuation approaches support comparison and prioritisation, they cannot capture the full range of impacts arising from a terrorist attack, including bereavement, long-term psychological harm, and wider community effects.

For threat assessors and duty holders, the central issue is prevention. Measures such as behavioural threat assessment, structured risk assessment processes, and coordinated intelligence sharing – including those highlighted by the public inquiry – can reduce both the likelihood of an attack and its potential consequences. While compensation and recovery mechanisms remain necessary, proportionate, evidence-led preparedness remains the most effective means of limiting long-term harm.

Conclusion

The £20 million settlement for Manchester’s young survivors reflects the scale of harm caused by the attack, but it also highlights the limits of financial redress. Compensation frameworks and policy valuation models play an important role in acknowledging loss and funding long-term support, yet they operate only after harm has occurred.

The more consequential question is how such outcomes can be avoided. Strengthening threat assessment, improving information sharing, and embedding proportionate protective measures – as now required under Martyn’s Law – shifts the focus from recovery to risk reduction. In this context, the true measure of value is not the scale of compensation paid after an attack, but the extent to which effective preparedness reduces the likelihood and impact of future harm.