NEGOTIATIONS: Civil Justice Council looks at benchmarking fees and creating regulatory role

Two rival expert witness groups have set aside their differences to create a long-awaited joint code of guidance for their members - and have indicated that they are set to work more closely together in the future.

The code, to be released later this month, is the result of negotiations between the Expert Witness Institute (EWI) and the Academy of Experts, and will replace the two codes that are currently in operation.

The discussions were helped along by the expert witness committee of the Civil Justice Council (CJC).

EWI secretary Brian Thompson said both organisations were pleased with the result, as having two codes had been a recipe for confusion.

He added that they hoped to form closer links in the future and would be issuing an interim report in April, mooting ways of going about this, with a view to producing final plans in the autumn.

'A joint working group has been looking for the last year at how we could work more closely together, and we have achieved a certain amount of success - it has all been very amicable,' he said.

'This is not something that will come to fruition overnight; it will depend on the membership [of the two bodies].'

The Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, has said in the past that he would like to see the two organisations merge as they were 'competing rather than co-operating'.

The CJC expert committee is currently looking at ways of benchmarking experts fees, improving the way in which experts are used, and developing a more regulatory role for expert representative bodies.

Robert Musgrove, CJC secretary and private secretary to Lord Phillips, said: 'The CJC very much welcomes news of the imminent publication of a single and agreed code of guidance for experts.

[We] congratulate the EWI and the academy on their co-operation in producing the single code, as an important step in the continued development of high-quality, good-value expert services.'

Paula Rohan

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