Civil Procedure Rules and the Dilapidations Protocol

This subsection considers elements of the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) that will be of relevance to surveyors in dilapidations disputes and also the Pre-Action Protocol for Claims for Damages in relation to the Physical State of Commercial Property at the end of a lease (the Dilapidations Protocol).

At appropriate points, elements of the CPR and the PLA Protocol are considered elsewhere. This subsection is intended to consider all the relevant material in one place.

An overview of the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR)

The Civil Procedure Rules 1998 were introduced in April 1999 and effected a significant change in the way in which civil litigation is conducted in England and Wales. The CPR are a series of rules (known as Parts, for example, Part 1, Part 2, etc.) which set out important principles for the conduct of civil litigation. They are supported by Practice Directions that are generally intended to deal with some of the detail for the implementation of the principles set out in the rules themselves.

The foremost aim of the CPR is to encourage the parties to avoid litigation by arriving at a settlement, thus reducing the number of cases going to court and saving expense and time. It is intended to be less adversarial, more cooperative and generally less complex.

An important feature of the CPR is that it encourages parties to a dispute to exchange full information before proceedings are issued. The intention is that the full claim is presented at day one and that, where information is available, it should be presented with the claim documents, to ensure that the respondent has a full indication of the case made against it.

Significantly, the CPR gives judges the power to impose sanctions (often, adverse costs orders) on a litigant whom the judge considered has behaved unreasonably before or during the litigation. Although judges had similar powers previously, they were not so well flagged or used. The effect of the CPR was that judges would feel more confident in, for example, not awarding costs to the winner of litigation or requiring a winning (but unreasonable) litigant to pay some or all of the loser’s costs.