A professional colleague has now analysed the statistics to assess whether the enhanced court fees introduced on 9 March 2015 have affected litigation levels and he makes the following observations:
The rates of litigated personal injury claims have not been affected by the substantially enhanced court fees. The position was ambiguous after the end of Q2.
In Q3 there were 34,192 issued injury claims. That is a 0.6% increase over Q2, and a 1.9% increase over the corresponding quarter of 2014. That said, Q3 of 2015 is 5.8% lower than the level before the last pre fee increase (Q1). And of course while there are plans to raise issue fees further, this does not apply to injury claims.
The number of “unliquidated money claims” which will include commercial cases brought against insurers if not for a specific sum of money are generally at a much lower level than injury claims. But the trend there is towards fewer claims. Q3 at 1,826 is an increase of 4.6% over Q2, but is down 18.6% over the corresponding quarter in 2014, and is a fall of 25.7% from the pre-increase level in Q1. And court fees may increase further for that type of claim.
So in injury claims, while there is some limited evidence of claims transferring between solicitors at the time of proceedings, from one firm which cannot afford the fee to one which can, the cases seem to still be being issued.
Over and out.
Legal Orange.
Legal Orange 