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Civil way: 19 September 2025

19 September 2025 / Stephen Gold
Issue: 8131 / Categories: Features , Procedure & practice , Civil way
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Specials interest down; LPAs to cost more; canapes in Supreme Court; £24ph for LiPs

LAWBITES

Interest jerk The Bank of England base rate does not change without movement of the Court Funds Office’s (CFO) special account rate. That makes life tough for the sucker you charge with the job of calculating interest on personal injury specials. The latest base rate change means that as from 20 August 2025 the special account rate has dropped from 4.25% to 4.00%. The CFO basic rate was also down from 3.19% to 3.00%. If the sucker is not up to the job, see ‘Civil way’, NLJ, 17 January 2025, p15.

Bloody hell ‘This House Believes that Matrimonialisation is a Load of B……s’. That is the motion to be debated later in the day of the Financial Remedies Conference on 16 October 2025. By then the earlier chair Mr Justice Peel and speaker Sir Nicholas Mostyn may have been handed a redacted programme and be safely out of the building.

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Red Lion Chambers—Maurice MacSweeney

Red Lion Chambers—Maurice MacSweeney

Set creates new client and business development role amid growth

Winckworth Sherwood—Charlie Hancock

Winckworth Sherwood—Charlie Hancock

Private wealth and tax offering bolstered by partner hire

Browne Jacobson—Matthew Kemp

Browne Jacobson—Matthew Kemp

Firm grows real estate team with tenth partner hire this financial year

NEWS
The rank of King’s Counsel (KC) has been awarded to 96 barristers, and no solicitors, in the latest silk round
Early determination is no longer a novelty in arbitration. In NLJ this week, Gustavo Moser, arbitration specialist lawyer at Lexis+, charts the global embrace of summary disposal powers, now embedded in the Arbitration Act 1996 and mirrored worldwide. Tribunals may swiftly dismiss claims with ‘no real prospect of succeeding’, but only if fairness is preserved
The Ministry of Justice is once again in the dock as access to justice continues to deteriorate. NLJ consultant editor David Greene warns in this week's issue that neither public legal aid nor private litigation funding looks set for a revival in 2026
Civil justice lurches onward with characteristic eccentricity. In his latest Civil Way column, Stephen Gold, NLJ columnist, surveys a procedural landscape featuring 19-page bundle rules, digital possession claims, and rent laws he labels ‘bonkers’
Can a chief constable be held responsible for disobedient officers? Writing in NLJ this week, Neil Parpworth, professor of public law at De Montfort University, examines a Court of Appeal ruling that answers firmly: yes
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