Time for a spring clean?

The general view is that Pt 36, governing formal offers to settle, is one of the more successful parts of the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR), but is in urgent need of a spring clean. Since it was last revised in April 2007, a number of specific problems have arisen that need to be dealt with sooner rather than later, and some of the key provisions of Pt 36 are anyway needlessly technical and should be made a lot simpler. Excessive technicality leads to mistakes being made, and so many supposed “Pt 36 offers” are in reality no such thing, and may have only a marginal influence on any costs order made by the court—the opposite of the offeror’s expectations. At the same time, lack of clarity as to how Pt 36 works makes it less effective than it should be as a system of sticks and carrots