The bill of costs is in need of a makeover, says Claire Green
With the courts preparing for a £350m cash injection over the next five years, much of which will hopefully go on better IT—under the deal struck by the Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor a few months ago—we are finally heading to the point when the good old bill of costs needs a makeover.
Indeed, it was one of Lord Justice Jackson’s recommendations. His report said that a new format of bills of costs should be devised, “which will be more informative and capable of yielding information at different levels of generality”.
The recommendations continued: “Software should be developed which will (a) be used for time recording and capturing relevant information and (b) automatically generate schedules for summary assessment or bills for detailed assessment as and when required. The long-term aim must be to harmonise the procedures and systems which will be used for costs budgeting, costs management, summary assessment and detailed assessment.”
The work towards this began with
