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I have to concur with much of what has been said below.

The fact first budgets are often required before the parties have any cast iron directions is a farce. How many experts in how many fields will each party be allowed? What about lay witnesses? ELH? Will there be a PTR hearing? Another CMC/CCMC? Do you put costs of things that might happen in the main phases, or add another 10 contingencies?

And then you have the issue of updates. Multi track work rarely follows a predictable path - do you wait until you know that you will exceed your last approved budget (probably because you already have) so as not to do extra budgeting work until absolutely necessary, and then look to get an updated budget approved, or do you update at every new twist or turn, just in case?

And then there is the whole debacle of the bill format required where a CMO has been made, nicely slipped into the April 2016 CPR update and with no transitional provision. Pre and post April 2013 split, and potentially 10 or more parts pre and post April, with those parts split into incurred and estimated costs, and broken down by recipient etc. But of course by the time you draft your bill they're all incurred costs, so it's actually costs incurred pre and post your last approved/agreed budget. Probably.

I'd all but completed a £500k bill on the basis of the previous requirements (the need for an accompanying precedent Q), but as a result of awaiting a few final fee notes it wasn't finalised until after that date. The budgeting process had begun 3 years earlier, so much of the budgeting work done up to that point had all been done without even precedent Q being a requirement. The notion of redrafting that bill from scratch because of that rule change does not bear thinking about. The additional layers of work required to break down the costs into all the different criteria now required, from the budgeting phase through to detailed assessment, is ridiculous. It has only served to complicate the costs process many times over, and added significant extra cost that really wasn't needed.

I'm not a fan of fixed costs at all, but I also recognise that in run of the mill low value claims they have a place, in particular to help avoid satellite litigation over costs (if insurers and their costs advisers can stop themselves from looking for new ways to try and save a few quid in such matters). However, in the multi track the old system of providing a costs estimate at allocation and listing and a bill at the end worked far better and far more efficiently than this current process.