New courts mean business

History was made this week with the launch of the new Business and Property Courts of England and Wales.

The launch, at the Rolls Building in London, is the first of a series of launches to mark the roll out of the courts across the country. Birmingham was next with further launches in Leeds (10 July), Manchester (11 July), Bristol (14 July) and Cardiff (24 July).

The Business and Property Courts are the new name for England and Wales’ international dispute resolution jurisdictions and will act as a single umbrella for business specialist courts across England and Wales, including the Commercial Court, the Technology and Construction Court and the courts of the Chancery Division.

Under the new structure, there will be more flexible cross-deployment of judges. Currently, judges who are experts in a particular area are not readily deployed to sit in cases in that area in another court. For example, competition law judges in the Queen’s Bench Division (QBD) cannot easily sit on a competition case in the Chancery Division.

Sir Brian Leveson, President of the QBD, said: ‘Cross deployment of judges across the Chancery and Queen’s Bench Divisions for the purposes of the Financial List has demonstrated the real value of flexible deployment in appropriate cases.

‘This development will be of benefit both to the courts and the users of the courts.’

Sir Geoffrey Vos, Chancellor of the High Court of England and Wales, said ‘the specialist jurisdictions of our courts will all be using names that national and international business people can readily understand’.