Court price-hike plan in the dock

Date published: 17 March 2015


PROPOSED increases to court fees of up to 622 per cent have been attacked by the President of the Oldham Law Association as “government profiteering”.

Steve Durham of Cuttle & Co Solicitors has criticised plans to increase the cost of issuing proceedings for the recovery of money to five per cent of the claim for all claims over £10,000.

So after it is introduced, the fee to issue a £190,000 legal claim would cost £9,500 compared with its current price of £1,315.

Mr Durham, the newly-elected association president, has called on local MPs to support his appeal to scrap the price hikes to avoid an inaccessible justice system.

He said: “This announcement has already received criticism from the National Law Society and the Civil Justice Council.

“The way the current system works is that solicitors often cover court fees knowing they will be able to recover them. With such extortionate upfront prices most firms will simply not have the cashflow to do this and will therefore not be able to take on certain cases. These fees will be prohibitive.”

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Justice, Shailesh Vara MP said claims of less than £10,000, which are unaffected by the proposals, make up over 90 per cent of the total.

Oldham West and Royton MP Michael Meacher said: “The number of people accessing courts has gone down and I am really opposed to the imposition of higher fees.”