The High Court has rejected a challenge to a £500,000 costs bill despite the fees charged exceeding the guideline hourly rates by as much as 40%.

In Harlow District Council v Powerrapid Limited Mr Justice Choudhury said it was open to the court to decide that guideline rates were only a starting point in detailed as well as summary assessments.

He concluded that the GHR were ‘not particularly useful’ in this case and pointed out that definitions for categories of work were ‘very broad’ and that secondary London rates encompassed services that were ‘the most straightforward and simple of cases [through] to work that is legally highly specialised and difficult’.

Choudhury also emphasised that rates should be assessed for a whole firm and not reassessed for different stages of litigation, agreeing there was no expectation that a litigant should switch to a cheaper firm offering smaller and simpler aspects of work.

The court heard that defendant Harlow District Council had contested the claimant’s £489,000 costs after a successful challenge to a compulsory purchase order. The claimant was represented by BDB Pitmans.

It was submitted that Costs Judge Leonard, who made a preliminary assessment regarding applicable hourly rates, wrongly departed from the ‘London 2’ rates and instead permitted rates that ranged from 8% to 41% higher than those in the guidelines.

Choudhury, sitting with Costs Judge Rowley, acknowledged that the London 1 band was for ‘very heavy commercial and corporate work by central London firms’, with London 2 being for ‘all other work’. But he ruled that London 1 rates were not ‘reserved exclusively’ for heavy commercial or corporate work and could include the planning and litigation work done there.

He rejected the submission that the simple nature of the work claimed for was borne out by each party having just one QC (as was) and no junior supporting them at the planning inquiry.

Choudhury added: ‘The fact that more counsel were not involved may point more to efficiency (or, as the judge put it, “doing the job properly”) than a lack of complexity.’