Civil costs
The Civil Justice Council has approved the creation of a Costs Working Group.
The working group will consider four areas:
- A review of Costs Budgeting
- A review of Guideline Hourly Rates (GHRs)
- Examination of costs under pre-action protocols/portals and the digital justice system
- Consideration of the wider impact of the extension of Fixed Recoverable Costs (FRC)
The work will be overseen by a steering group. The steering group will liaise with a wider working group composed of representative interests, as necessary throughout the process.
Consultation
The working group has launched a public consultation, which will run for 3 months until Friday 30 September 2022 at 12pm. Read the full consultation paper online (PDF).
Responses to the consultation should be submitted online by file upload (external link).
For ease, a copy of the consultation questions is available as a word document (Word doc).
Steering Group
- Birss LJ (Deputy Head of Civil Justice)
- Joanna Smith J (High Court Judge)
- Master Amanda Stevens (Queen’s Bench Master)
- HHJ Nigel Bird (Circuit Judge)
- DJ Judy Gibson (CJC & Regional Costs Judge)
Wider Working Group
- Judge Gordon-Saker (Senior Costs Judge)
- DJ Simon Middleton (Regional Costs Judge)
- Master Kaye (Chancery Master)
- Nicholas Bacon (Costs Barrister)
- Nicola Critchley (CJC & Defendant solicitor)
- Brett Dixon (Claimant solicitor)
- Larry Shaw (CILEx)
- Jack Ridgway (Costs Lawyer)
- Robert Wright (Ministry of Justice)
- Elisabeth Davies (CJC & Consumer Interest)
- Paul Seddon (Legal Aid Practitioners Group)
- Andrew Higgins (CJC & Academic)