What does it take to displace the service deeming provisions of the CPR...
What does it take to displace the service deeming provisions of the Criminal Procedure Rules (CPR)—the current postal disarray? Surely the time has come for the court to say that the continued application of these provisions is a violence to common sense.
It would take an amendment of the CPR or a decision of the Court of Appeal! However, the latter is unlikely. In a slightly different context, the point did trouble the Court of Appeal in Barnes v St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council [2006] EWCA (Civ) 1372, [2006] All ER (D) 303 (Oct) but the principle is that the occasional deeming of service, when the reality is that the claim form was delayed or lost in the post, is the price to be paid for having a regime that provides certainty as to the service date to be taken.
If the court was satisfied that service had not been effected on the deemed date or at all and that the defendant had a real prospect of successfully defending,
