Cost budgeting: Plain sailing ahead?

• Life pre-precedent T: attempting to streamline and standardise.
• The new regime.
• The form: fairly self-explanatory.
• Thoughts for the future: plain sailing?

Some of the most common questions I get asked by my clients involve when and how do they go about revising their previously approved budgets during the course of litigation. These are never easy to answer given the ambiguities surrounding such terms as ‘significant development’ or ‘good reason’ and the court’s powers to make rulings on costs for work already incurred. The Civil Procedure Rules Committee has attempted to address some of these issues by introducing a new ‘Precedent T’ as part of their 122nd update to the Civil Procedure rules which came into force in October.

Life pre-precedent T

The previous process for revising an approved budget stems from Practice Direction 3E. The parties are obliged to revise their budgets in respect of future costs (upwards or downwards) should significant development in litigation warrant