From 1st October 2023, The Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) will extend the Fixed Recoverable Costs (FRC) Regime which already applies to Personal Injury claims. The effect of the extension of the regime will be felt by the vast majority of parties who become involved in Civil Litigation after this date.
FRC are a pre-determined amount of costs that a successful party is entitled to recover from the losing party in civil litigation claims of a value up to £100,000.00. Historically, these have only applied to proceedings which have been allocated to the Small Claims Track (i.e. claims with a value of less than £10,000) but moving forward, they will apply to claims in the fast-track, multi-track and the new intermediate-track.
The amount of FRC that a party might be entitled to will depend on the complexity and value of the claim. Each claim will be allocated to one of the four tracks (Small Claim, Fast-Track, Intermediate-Track and Multi-Track). Once allocated to a track, the claim will be assigned to one of four complexity bands; the higher the band, the higher the value of the FRC. The criteria for assignment will vary but much will depend on how complex the issues are, how long a hearing is likely to last and the volume of evidence required.
The aim of the new regime is to introduce more costs certainty for parties to litigation which will assist them when assessing the costs benefit of pursuing a case to court, as well as providing more certainty around budgeting for proceedings. It is however, likely to mean that there will be a shortfall between the total outlay necessary to pursue the matter to a hearing and the fixed costs that are recoverable under the scheme.
It should be noted that there are some exceptions to the new FRC regime but these are mostly reserved for specific personal injury cases and claims which involve children or vulnerable adults. The Ministry of Justice has, however, delayed the application of FRC to housing cases until October 2025.
Your solicitor will be able to advise you as to how the FRC might affect your claim and which track and complexity band it is likely to be assigned to. A more detailed table of the allocation criteria can be found in Appendix 1.
For any further information, please contact our Litigation Department who will happy to discuss your claim in more detail.
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