Lord Justice Jackson delivered the third annual Harbour Funding Lecture on 13 May 2015, which focused on proposed improvements to costs management.
His recommendations are as follows:
A sub-committee of the Civil Procedure Rule Committee chaired by Coulson J is due to consider the above recommendations.
- To address judicial inconsistency, there should be improved judicial training on costs management, made compulsory for all civil judges, with a standard form of costs management order (from which courts can depart as required by individual cases).
- To prevent early costs budgets from being overtaken by events, 14 days before the case and costs management conference (CCMC) should become the specified time (rather than merely the default position) for lodging budgets.
- For cases which have been subject to costs management and which proceed to detailed assessment, all courts should order the receiving party to lodge a summary of its bill of costs in a format which matches Precedent H.
- Amendments to Precedent H, particularly amending the provisions in respect of assumptions and contingencies, offering further guidance on expert costs and separating the provisions for ADR and settlement discussions.
- Repeal recent amendments to CPR 3.15 and PD 3E (the consequence of which is that courts are making costs management orders in virtually every case where such an order is available). Instead, PD 3E could set out criteria to guide courts in deciding whether or not to make a costs management order. The court should not manage costs in any case if it lacks the resources to do so without causing significant delay and disruption to that or other cases.
- To address high incurred costs, the court should only budget future costs, leaving incurred costs for detailed assessment if not agreed. Where the court has sufficient information, it should have the power to comment on the incurred costs, summarily to assess the incurred costs, or to set a global budget figure for any phase, including both incurred and future costs.
In a response to the lecture, Lord Dyson MR generally endorsed Lord Justice Jackson’s input. Lord Dyson raised some points of concern regarding the issue of courts declining to manage costs due to lack of resources, as he was concerned that such opting out might turn costs management into the exception rather than the rule.
‘Confronting Costs Management’, Harbour Lecture by Lord Justice Jackson, 13 May 2015
