Civil Procedure Rules in England and Wales are succeeding

The revolutionary new Civil Procedure Rules were introduced in April 1999 following Lord Woolf's report Access to Justice. The aims of the reform were:

• to improve access to justice;
• to reduce the complexity of the rules and speed up the process.

Research published by the Lord Chancellor's Department Civil Justice Reform Evaluation: Emerging Findings: An Early Evaluation of the Civil Justice Reforms in March 2001 indicates that the system is achieving substantial success. The key findings are:

• There has been an overall drop in the number of claims issued, from around 225,000 to around 175,000. The introduction of a rule that a claim can only be issued in the High Court if the value of the claim is more than GBP 15,000 has led to a fall from around 11,000 to under 2,000. The number of County Court claims for contract or tort has fallen from around 82,000 to around 65,000.
• Anecdotal evidence suggests that the introduction of pre-action protocols are working well to promote settlement before issue of proceedings, and to reduce the number of ill-founded claims. There is an indication that lawyers are now being involved by clients earlier in an effort to avoid litigation.
• Issued cases are settling earlier.
• The introduction of the ability for claimants to make offers of settlement (Part 36 offers) appears to contribute to resolving claims more quickly.
• There has been a rise in the number of cases in which Alternative Dispute Resolution procedures are adopted.
• The use of single joint experts appears to have contributed to a less adversarial culture, early to err settlement and may have cut costs.
• Case Management Conferences appear to be a key factor in making litigation less complex.
• The time between issue and hearing for those cases that go to trial has fallen. Curiously, however, the time between issue and hearing for small claims (under GBP 5,000, but under GBP 1000 for personal injuries) has risen.
• The number of appeals during the course of proceedings appears to have fallen sharply.
• It is too early to provide a definitive view on costs.

The report is available on http://www.open.gov.uk/lcd/civil/emerge/emerge.htm. The Lord Chancellor's Department has commissioned a number of further research projects to examine relevant aspects of the reforms.

For further information, please contact Chris Hodges by e-mail at [email protected] or by telephone on +44 (0)20 7367 2738.