Gold reports on radical change coming down the pipeline for fee remission (the Help with Fees scheme), explaining what this means in practice and what lawyers and judges will have to do. On these changes, he writes: ‘The jury is out as to whether that will increase or decrease the number of deficient applications and you should be warned that when HMCTS asks for additional information or evidence, it will have to be provided within a set period of at least seven days or the application will be treatable as abandoned.’
Gold also contemplates the ever-morphing pre-trial checklist and other civil justice nuggets.