Hourly rates that can be claimed by litigants in person could be set to increase after rule-makers agreed to a review.
Minutes from the Civil Procedure Rule Committee from July reveal that members discussed whether the current £19 hourly rate should be revised. It was agreed in principle that a review should be undertaken and this would be discussed with the Ministry of Justice.
Committee member and solicitor Ian Curtis-Nye raised the issue of whether LiP rates should be looked at again following inflationary increases on lawyer costs. This was last considered in 2014 when the current sum of £19 was set. Prior to that it was £18 from 2011 onwards and before then £9.25.
Many lawyers may not be aware that litigants in person can claim back the costs of work and disbursements which would have been allowed if carried out by a legal representative. CPR 46.5 allows LiPs to claim costs where they prove financial loss for the time spent on a case, as well as recover the costs of obtaining expert assistance.
The costs allowed under this rule cannot exceed, except in the case of a disbursement, two-thirds of the amount which would have been allowed if the LiP had been represented.
The £19 rate has been challenged on occasion, for example at the county court in Oxford in a case reported on last year, where both claimant and defendant were solicitors.
The judge in that case found that because the claimant could not show they were being represented by a firm, he could not show he was anything other than a litigant in person. Consequently he could only recover £19 hour rates rather than the £500 he had claimed.
In the case of Spencer v Paul Jones Financial Services, reported here, the LiP was allowed an hourly rate of £150 because he presented his evidence with ‘sufficient specificity’ to establish he had suffered that level of financial loss.
