Fixed fees are not unusual in Civil Proceedings, they already apply to the majority of Personal Injury cases, debt matters and some Landlord and Tenant Proceedings.
However, the Government are now intending to impose fixed fees in Civil Proceedings in general, which can be quite daunting for clients, especially in multi-track cases where there is cost budgeting and costs generated by larger firms can be high. At Almy and Thomas we are quite happy that the fixed fees to be announced are within the parameters of the costings that we offer to clients already and we therefore embrace the necessity for change in funding arrangements.
We quite often find that opponents costs in Civil Proceedings are twice that of our own clients which is a cause for concern. The same applies in Financial Proceedings ancillary to Divorce and Children cases in our family department.