Top City litigators have cast doubt over the value of a single civil court, saying they see 'more obvious potential benefit' in rationalising the Queen's Bench and Chancery Divisions into a single division with specialist lists.

Responding to the Department for Constitutional Affairs' consultation on combining the High Court and county court, the London Solicitors Litigation Association (LSLA) said the three benefits identified - user, judicial and administrative - 'are either objectives which we question are necessary or appear to represent ends which could be achieved without necessarily abolishing the two-tier High Court and county court system'.


Reform has been pushed by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, and the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, but the LSLA said it was unclear whether the proposal 'is the result of any perceived need on the part of any user group for reform'. It also suggested that the benefit of a single right of audience in all civil courts might be 'illusory'.


LSLA president Graham Huntley, a partner at Lovells, said: 'If a single civil court would increase the scope for harmonising back-office resources and IT infrastructure, then it should be clear that any savings will be ploughed back into the civil justice system.'



However, he supported integrating the Queen's Bench and Chancery Divisions so long as there were lists of judges with specific expertise and experience 'in areas which many practitioners now considered was more relevant to modern civil justice than the distinction between Chancery and Queen's Bench'. He also emphasised the need to retain the Commercial Court.


In its response to the consultation - which closed this week - the Bar Council also argued that while reforms were needed, they could be better accomplished within the existing structure without the up-front costs of a new single court. It suggested that a centralised single court may be administratively inflexible and less responsive to local needs.