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Proposal for fixed costs in litigation for cases worth up to £250,000
Posted on March 1st 2016Lord Justice Jackson has proposed the imposition of a “grid of fixed costs” on all civil claims worth up to £250,000.
Describing the current system as “exorbitantly expensive”, Lord Justice Jackson said that such a fixed costs regime would dispense with the need for costs budgeting, which is generally unpopular within the legal profession. Lord Jackson’s proposed grid would set fixed costs for solicitors’ and barristers’ fees, excluding disbursements, enforcement fees and VAT. It would divide the course of a case into 10 stages, following the 10 stages in the precedent H costs budget presently used within the multi-track, and dispense with the need for costs management. Under the grid, the band for the case would be determined by the sum or value of the property recovered where the claimant won. Where the defendant won, it would be determined by the sum or the value of property claimed.
Lord Justice Jackson called on the government to take a decision on whether to have fixed costs for the lower reaches of the multi-track, as he recommended, or for all cases.
He said that if the government did not “wish to pursue this reform as a priority”, it should “suggest that a senior judge who doesn’t mind being pilloried (preferably not me again)” actually draws up the scheme. He added that “if the political will is there, this whole project could be accomplished during the course of this year”.
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, recently reiterated the senior judiciary’s call for the extension of fixed costs across the fast-track and the lower end of the multi-track, and in response to a question on this in Parliament, justice minister Lord Faulks said: “The government remains supportive of the principle of extending fixed recoverable costs and we continue to consider areas in which implementation might be appropriate and workable.”
Lord Justice Jackson said he believed that moving immediately to a fixed cost for all civil cases would be “too great a change for the profession to accept”, at least in the short-term, but once his new regime was in place, “people can see how it works and consider whether to introduce a universal fixed costs regime”.