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I couldn't agree more with Anon at 17.31 yesterday.

I have an Immigration Appeal Matter in respect of which a Circuit Judge made a Directions Order on 26 April on the papers alone, about which neither side was informed at the time, and which contained numerous Directions with "not later than" dates throughout May. Unfortunately, the Court (I will refrain from naming which one to avoid embarrassment) did not even draw the Order until 26 May by which time both my firm and the GLD were substantially in default in respect of several requirements.

It appears that we are both being held responsible, notwithstanding that we knew nothing about the Order, or indeed about the matter having been referred to a Judge for Directions at all, and despite my sending several chasers by email and following these up with telephone calls to the Court in the period between lodging the Appeal personally on 13 April, until 31st May when the Order finally appeared.

I got no response to any of the emails, and the explanation on the occasions I could actually get through to anyone, was that the Civil Section would do it's best to deal with this within a period of six weeks or so from the date of lodging, as they were having to deal with an horrendous backlog presently.

The issue of course with these matters is to make an Application for an extension of time, if not already agreed, prior to the expiry of any relevant time limit. This then at least avoids the problems associated with having to issue an Application for relief from sanctions at the same time. It takes the proverbial you know what however, when one is faced with having to make such Applications in a situation where one could not possibly have known about the Order, the Directions, or indeed in this particular case what those Directions might have been.

The same Court incidentally took over six weeks recently to issue an urgent Injunction Application depite my chasing almost daily. In the intervening period the client's case was severely prejudiced. The client blames us.

Having said all that, I have no sympathy for the Defendants in the Redbourne case. One anticipates that their solicitors would have warned them about the CPR consequences of failing to comply with time limits. Seeking relief from sanctions is a risky business, and in my experience sanctions are certainly being more rigorously enforced. No surprise then at all frankly that Coulson J. concluded as he did.