Local courts aren't following lead of senior courts when applying new cost budgeting rules
Lawyers have reported discrepancies among county courts in applying the costs budgeting and other new rules.
Nichola Evans, partner at Browne Jacobson, writing in NLJ this week, reports that Manchester county courts spend less than quarter of an hour on costs budgets while “another county court just down the M62 says that its average is an hour”.
Evans describes a series of “war stories” drawn from word of mouth, anecdote and legal blogs and calls for a more consistent approach in the lower courts.
“We know that the appeal judges are following Jackson to the letter. What we sometimes don’t know are the local practices and procedures being adopted and the fact that we could be pulled up by judges for not complying with local customs.
“If we don’t comply with local customs we face being struck out and with very little chance of obtaining relief from sanction.”
