David Greene considers the implications of the reform of the county court system
You could knock me down with a feather. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has listened substantively and acted upon the response of consultees to a consultation paper.
Last March the MoJ issued a consultation paper—Solving disputes in the county courts: creating a simpler, quicker and more proportionate system. It was, and remains, unclear what, if anything, we might draw from the reference to “solving” rather than “resolving disputes”. Tweet your answers to me @LitLawyer.
Attacking the “claims culture”
This was part of a series of papers issued on both cutting the cost of civil litigation and attacking what was coined as a “claims culture”. Also, lying in the foreground, were the cuts in the civil justice budget which led to the ongoing closure of a substantial proportion of the county court establishment. In the consultation paper the MoJ made a number of proposals:
- increasing the financial limit for Road Traffic Act fixed fee claims;
- a simplified claims procedure on a fixed costs basis for more types of personal
