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Cost budgetting is an expensive waste of time. A fairer, more accurate result will always be achieved by detailed assessment if the parties can't agree the amount the paying party should receive.

Cost budgetting entails two or more parties in every case unless LIPs are involved. There is usually only one receiving party. Scrutiny of one party's costs after the event must surely entail less expense of time and money than scrutiny of two beforehand.

Budgetting will never be popular because of the inherent illogicality of trying to cost the unknown. In Rumsfeldtian terms, there are far too many unknown unknowns. Few practitioners believe in it. Judges and practitioners alike regard it as an unnecessary impediment to the business of getting the job done. The sooner budgetting in all but a few cases goes, and it must, the better.