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I would invite anyone to read Practice Direction 51R - the online civil money claims pilot scheme rules.

This temporary pilot scheme is supposed to trial out the simplification of civil money claims for litigants in person (it is a trial only open to non represented parties with claims under £10,000).

This "simplification" to the rules consists of 16,386 words of additional rules and regulations which simply sit on top of, and for the most part replicate, the already existing Practice Direction 7E on Money Claims Online (which itself replicates Practice Direction 7C on the Claims Production Centre, which itself simply makes modifications to the existing CPR Parts 7, 9 to 12 and 14 to 16.

And these 16,386 words (and an accompanying document explaining how the court already applies determination of rate of payment in admitted claims) *ONLY* deal with undefended claims up to judgment, and defended claims up to a point where a claim is referred for mediation and then transferred back into the Money Claims Online regime.

And as far as I can tell, these 16,386 words actually make only two substantive modifications to the existing rules.

The first is that the time for filing acknowlegdment of service is set at 19 days, and if acknowledged, the time for filing defence is set at 33 days in both cases after the date of issue (instead of 14 days and 28 days after date of deemed service). But this is what the County Court Business Centre do anyway (albeit without, it appears, any formal authority to do so) since the existing N1CPC Claim Form (which is what the CCBC / Money Claims Online use) states on it that the date of service is "taken" as being five calendar days after the date of issue. And if you add five days to the existing time limits you end up with these figures.

The second is that the Claimant must "list any documents and evidence that they may want to rely on to support their claim". Although so far as I can tell, there is no sanction for breach of this rule, and the list has no actual formal status.

That's it. To simplify the rules for litigants in person, they publish an addendum practice direction of 16,386 words which can only be understood by reading them together with the existing rules, and which together actually only make two changes to those rules. And one of those changes (dates of service) has been used by Money Claims Online / the CCBC / Claims Production Centre at Northampton County Court since the early 1990s anyway. And the other is actually otiose and has no actual effect or purpose (other than to help the litigant in person claimant think about their claim at an earlier stage).

And just think that the whole of these additional rules, including PD7C, PD7E, PD51R as well as other ones such as PD51O (electronic working scheme), PD51V (video hearings pilot scheme) and much of PD23A (on telephone hearings and video conferencing) could be replaced by two single sentences:-

1. Where a document is to be filed at court or served on a person, and the court offers an online service for that document to be filed or served, a party may use that service if they wish.

2. If a hearing is to take place, and the parties have facilities for that hearing to be conducted by telephone, video conferencing or using an online service, in each case using a provider approved by the court, the judge may order that hearing to be conducted using those facilities.

It has to be very special people who sit on these rule committees and write this garbage who really think that their simplified rules are enhanced by writing what could be done in two sentences in six Practice Directions!

In 1981 revised County Court Rules were issued, which contained 50 substantive Parts (Order 1 to Order 50) and encompassed everything - including Family cases, specialist proceedings, costs taxation and even some non-contentious probate matters!

The "simplified" CPR - which does not include family matters - has 89 substantive parts, well over 100 supplemental practice directions to those parts, 13 additional practice directions and 16 pre-action protocols.

Hmmmm....

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