Court fee consultation – have your say!

November 15, 2023February 6, 2024 Ella WilkinsonLeave a comment

The Ministry of Justice have recently published an open consultation regarding the proposed implementing of increases to various court and tribunal fees, citing factors such as the rise in the consumer price index and the running costs of HMCTS. The intended increases are 10% across a range of court and tribunal fees in several jurisdictions, to support the continued delivery of services and to reduce the level of subsidisation required from taxpayers.

Within the proposals, there is an intention to also establish a routine approach to reviewing and amending fees every two years, to take into account any changes in the running costs of HMCTS, as well as the wider financial position in respect of the economy and pricing.

The consultation began on 10 November 2023 and will end on 22 December 2023, so we would invite you to review the proposals and submit your views ahead of this deadline, as Court of Protection fees are included within the changes being considered. The Court of Protection specific proposals are set out in the below table:

Item	Current Fee	Proposed New Fee
Court of Protection application	£371.00	£408.00
Court of Protection appeal	£234.00	£257.00
Court of Protection hearing	£494.00	£543.00
Court of Protection filing for detailed assessment	£87.00	£96.00
Appeal against a Court of Protection costs assessment	£70.00	£77.00
Request to set aside a Court of Protection costs certificate	£65.00	£72.00

You can review the full consultation report via the link below for further information, and this also includes information as to how you can get in touch to submit your views (see pages 17-19 in particular).

Click to access tribunal-fees-consultation-web-accessible.pdf

You can find out more about our services here or you can contact Ella.wilkinson@clarionsolicitors.com for further information, who is an Associate within the Costs and Litigation Funding Department at Clarion.

Consultations open in respect of QOCS and Vulnerable Parties

May 10, 2022May 19, 2022 Andrew McAulay1 Comment

Following the fixed costs consultation published in September 2021, two further consultations have now opened in respect of provisions for vulnerable parties and the QOCS issues arising from Ho v Adelekun [2021] UKSC 43.

The consultations close on 20 June 2022 and details of how to respond can be found here.

QOCS consultation

We looked at the judgment in Ho v Adelekun back in December. The case clarified the position in respect of the interplay between CPR 44.12 and CPR 44.14, and the effect of QOCS on a Defendant’s ability to offset an order for their own costs against the Claimant’s costs. You can read that article here.

The decision confirmed that Defendants can only enforce their costs orders up to the amount ordered for the Claimant’s damages and interest (CPR 44.14 (1)). It was suggested at the time that this may lead to results that appeared unfair and that the CPRC may need to consider the issue to put right any ambiguities.

The proposed changes seek to address those concerns by adding the amount of any costs order to the sums set out in CPR 44.14 (1) and by including ‘deemed orders’ under Part 36:

Full details can be found here.

Vulnerable Parties Consultation

The vulnerable parties consultation proposes to add additional provisions for an amount in excess of fixed costs to be claimed where a party or witness is vulnerable, where that vulnerability has caused additional work to be required, and the claim is for an amount at least 20% greater than the applicable fixed costs.

Such claims will be assessed and, if the assessed sum is less than 20% greater than fixed costs, the court will make an order for the lesser amount of fixed costs or the assessed costs.

Full details can be found here.

You can find out more about our services here or you can contact the Costs and Litigation Funding team at CivilCosts@clarionsolicitors.com.

Consultation open on fixed recoverable costs in clinical negligence claims

February 21, 2022February 21, 2022 Andrew McAulayLeave a comment

Clinical negligence matters have so far been excluded from fixed costs reforms and do not form part of the changes already due to be implemented in October 2022 (which can be found here).

A separate review has been carried out in respect of lower value clinical negligence matters and the Department of Health & Social Care published their proposals on 31 January 2022.

The consultation document sets out proposals for a streamlined pre-issue claims process for claims outside of the small track valued up to £25,000 in damages. Proposed exclusions include claims requiring more than two liability experts, claims with multiple defendants (where the allegations are different), claims involving stillbirth or neonatal death and claims where limitation is raised as an issue.

Matters would fall into a standard track or a light track according to complexity. Streamlined processes are set out for each track and template documents are proposed.

The proposed fixed costs for each track are set out in the tables below and include provision for an additional ‘bolt-on’ for cases involving protected parties. We would recommend that the costs grid be read in conjunction with the flow charts detailing the process for each track at the end of the consultation report.

Both tracks include mandatory neutral evaluation. The evaluators fees would also be fixed and shared equally.

Sanctions are proposed for failure to comply with the scheme. For Defendants, failures to meet the initial response times would result in the claim moving from the light track to the standard track, or from the standard track out of the FRC scheme entirely. For other failures, a 50% percentage uplift or reduction is proposed depending on which party defaults.

The consultation closes on 24 April 2022 and can be completed online here.

This article was originally featured in our February newsletter which can be found here.