A deep dive into the new world of fixed recoverable costs

Litigation costs will be transformed on 1 October with the new fixed recoverable costs (FRCs) regime for most claims worth up to £100,000. As with any set of rule changes (and these run to 107 pages), there will be areas of real doubt. So who better to steer practitioners through them than Professor Dominic Regan, who advised Lord Justice Jackson – whose proposals underpin the new system – and Dr Mark Friston, barrister, deputy costs judge and author of the authoritative Friston on Costs.

This deep dive into the new world of FRCs will answer questions such as:

• How will a pre-existing contractual entitlement to, for example, ‘reasonable costs’ work in practice?
• But does rule 45.1(3) preclude contractual costs?
• Can a decision to assign a case to a particular complexity band be challenged?
• How will you know what FRCs apply in cases that settle pre-action without knowing which complexity band the case would have been assigned to?
• How in practice will defendants be able to enforce an entitlement to costs where a claim is made but discontinued?