Theory versus practice: 109th amendment

• Key changes effected by implementation of the 109th amendment.

Since costs budgeting began in 2013, practitioners have relied upon evolving case authority and Amendments to the Civil Procedure Rules for guidance and clarification of any points of ambiguity relating to costs management.

The 109th amendment to the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) came in to force as of 1 October 2019. Contained within this amendment was the new Practice Direction 3E, Para 7.4 which reads:

‘As part of the costs management process the court may not approve costs incurred up to and including the date of any costs management hearing. The court may, however, record its comments on those costs and will take those costs into account when considering the reasonableness and proportionality of all budgeted costs.’

The key change here is that incurred costs are now referred to as ‘up to and including the date of any costs management hearing’ where as the previous rules stated ‘before