DOUBLE WHAMMY FOR LITIGANTS
Well, someone has to pay for the sanitiser. Fast on the heels of the scrap of discount for commencing online (see ‘Civil way’, NLJ 26 March 2021, p22) comes news of the plan to hike fees across the board in civil, family and Court of Protection business (with even the magistrates’ courts set to be hit, which you can probably bear, although I would prefer not to know what an applicant has in mind when seeking a JP to ‘perform a function not on court premises’ which will cost them an extra £1). Some 133 fees are set for inflationary attack which my HMCTS borrowed calculator suggests is an average sort of around circa more or less 7.5% (although I didn’t pass maths and steer clear of detailed assessments). Some examples: a divorce will cost an extra £42 at £592 (surely no-fault deserves a reduction—must put that to them), and civil application
