Last week Judge Paul Collins took the unprecedented step of commenting publicly on the funding crisis that besets the civil justice system. Some might say he was simply stating what practitioners have known for some time.
When the Woolf reforms arrived in 1999, his Lordship had two aims – to reduce cost and to save time. In due course it was intended that the civil courts would become self-funding through court fees and this has led to fee increases. Indeed, many claimant practitioners now consider that the fees themselves are acting as a bar to justice. While that sentiment is perhaps overstated, it is difficult to see why what boils down to basic administrative tasks should cost hundreds of pounds.
