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"At the same time we are also giving claimants much longer to settle before incurring any cost."

No you're not. You stopped that when you massively hiked up issue fees immediately before the election.

There is also an anomaly that still hasn't been addressed. I have had several claims for relatively small amounts, say for example £4,000, which have been met with Counterclaims in excess of £10,000 and therefore allocated to the fast track. Here, the Claimant must still do the bulk of the work such as preparing Case Summaries for CMC's, bundles for trial and pay the trial fee. Any shortfall in recovery of costs is much more significant for a claim of £4k.

If a Counterclaim takes a Claim for less than £10k outside of the Small Claims Track, then the Defendant should, at the very least, be responsible for the Trial Fee.