Imminent Amendment to Costs Budgeting Rules

On 6^th April part of the 83^rd Amendment to the CPR comes into force that makes changes to the rules relating to costs budgeting. The stated aim of these amendments is “to reduce delays in the pre-trial process and to maximise judicial resources”. This is to be achieved by reducing the number of cases to which costs budgeting applies, by altering the point at which costs budgets are filed and encouraging agreement of budgets in advance of the first hearing.

The following amendments are made to Part 3 (II) and Practice Direction 3E – Costs Management:

• Only the first page of Precedent H is to be exchanged and filed in cases where the value of the claims is under £50,000 or the costs are less than £25,000. 
• Claims made on behalf of a child are excluded from the costs management regime.
• In cases where the Claimant has a limited or severely impaired life expectation the court will ordinarily dis-apply cost management. 
• Where the stated value of the claim is under £50,000 the budget must be filed with the Directions Questionnaire, for other claims it must be filed 21 days before the case management conference. 
• Agreed budget discussion reports (Precedent R) must be filed seven days before the first case management conference. 
• Amendments are also made to provide that costs claimed in each phase of the proceedings are made available to the court when assessing costs at the end of a case.