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09 June 2023 / Julian Chamberlayne , Louise Morgan
Issue: 8028 / Categories: Features , Procedure & practice , Costs
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Costs under review: made to measure

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The Civil Justice Council has handed down a wide range of recommendations on costs budgeting, guidelines hourly rates & beyond: Julian Chamberlayne & Louise Morgan hail the arrival of a more bespoke approach
  • The final report of the Civil Justice Council on costs recognised that guideline hourly rates (GHRs) require improvement.
  • A number of recommendations reflected the finding that cost budgeting needs to be more bespoke.

The Civil Justice Council (CJC) has now published its ‘Costs Review—Final Report’, following a ‘strategic and holistic review’ of costs by a working group. Costs budgeting, guideline hourly rates (GHRs), costs under pre-action protocols, digitisation of the justice system, and the extension of fixed recoverable costs (FRC) were all considered. The consultation comprised a conference and written submissions from stakeholders, with the consultation reopening to consider the Court of Appeal judgment in Belsner v CAM Legal Services Ltd [2022] EWCA Civ 1387.

This report is now in the hands of the Master of the Rolls to decide

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A quiet month for employment cases still delivers key legal clarifications. In his latest Employment Law Brief for NLJ, Ian Smith reports that whistleblowing protection remains intact even where disclosures are partly self-serving, provided the worker reasonably believes they serve the ‘public interest’ 
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