The Civil Procedure (Amendment No. 2) Rules 2022

EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This note is not part of the Rules)

These Rules amend the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (S.I. 1998/3132) by—

(a) making revisions to Parts 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8 (with consequential amendments, particularly for cross-references to numbers of rules in, or practice directions under, those Parts) pursuant to the Civil Procedure Rule Committee’s statutory duty under s. 2(7) of the Civil Procedure Act 1997(1) to try to make rules which are both simple and simply expressed;

(b) amending rule 6.23, to reflect more accurately the orders a court may make regarding the requirement for a party to provide an address for service, and amending rules 6.37 and 6.38 (with associated amendments in Part 62 and Part 73) to streamline the process for permission to serve out of the jurisdiction;

(c) amending Part 12 with drafting corrections and amending cross references in Parts 58 and 59, following the introduction of a new Part 12 by the Civil Procedure (Amendment) Rules 2022 (S.I. 2022/101);

(d) substituting Part 15 with a revised Part on defence and reply. The revised version includes clarification of the defendant’s obligations to file a defence where an application for summary judgment or strike out has been made. The substituted rule 24.4(2) and new rule 3.4(7) address the same issue;

(e) amending and substituting various rules in Part 16 with revised provisions;

(f) amending rule 38.3, by the insertion of new paragraph (5), to draw litigants’ attention to the need to use the prescribed form when giving notice of discontinuance, unless the court permits otherwise, so creating flexibility withing the rule while not removing the requirement of notice of discontinuance;

(g) removing from Part 45 (fixed costs) the scale costs provisions applicable to cases in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court and instead including these in Part 46 (costs – special cases), which better reflects the nature of the provisions, and, in addition, increasing the overall and stage costs caps to £60,000 and £30,000 respectively;

(h) substituting for Part 49 a new Part 49 under which practice directions making provision for miscellaneous specific proceedings are made;

(i) amending rule 52.14, so that the language used in that rule is consistent with that in the prescribed form when requesting that, in an appeal, the costs of obtaining a transcript of the judgment of the lower court be paid at public expense;

(j) amending Part 54 to insert a new Section dealing with procedure for environmental review;

(k) amending Part 55, 56 and 65 to take account of the changes in housing legislation introduced by the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016. The Part 55 Table of Contents is also updated to include a previously missing entry for rule 55.29, and the Part 65 Table of Contents is also updated to include previously missing references to suspension claims in the entries for rules 65.12 to 65.14;

(l) amending Part 61 (admiralty claims)—

(i) to remove any doubt that, under rule 61.4(2), in a collision claim a collision statement of case is served instead of particulars of claim; and

(ii) to address a lacuna in rule 61.9, identified in Tecoil Shipping Ltd v. The Owners of the Ship “Poseidon”[2020 EWHC 393 (Admlty), to provide that judgment in default of acknowledgement of service may be obtained in a collision claim;

(m) making consequential amendments to rules 63.26 and 63.27 in light of the above mentioned amendments to Part 45 Part 46;

(n) amending Part 81 to clarify the responsibility for publishing judgments in committal proceedings.

(1)

1997 c. 12.