On 1 April 2013 the Government changed the Civil Procedure Rules to introduce a system of automatic costs capping for judicial reviews in England and Wales in relation to “environmental matters” (a broad definition that embraces many “planning” JRs). This was to seek to comply with the Aarhus Convention’s principle that access to environmental justice should not be prohibitively expensive. However, surprise surprise, in some ways arguably the Government went further than was necessary and in other ways it didn’t go far enough.
What the system did was to allow claimants to opt for mutual cost capping when bringing a claim. If the claimant ultimately lost, as an individual (however well-resourced) his or her exposure to the successful defendant’s costs would then be capped at £5k and if a company or other body (however well-resourced) its exposure would be capped at £10k. As a quid pro quo, if the claimant won it could only recover up to £35k. The system only applies at first instance – further applications to the court for specific costs protection are required if the case then goes onto the Court of Appeal and beyond to the Supreme Court
The Government brought in the new system ahead of the CJEU giving judgment in Case C 530/11 European Commission v United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (13 February 2014). The CJEU did not address the post 1 April 2013 system but found that the previous regime was indeed non-compliant. Whilst the new system has addressed most of the CJEU’s criticisms, there are certainly still gaps, for example the current restriction of automatic cost capping to judicial review rather than statutory challenges (for instance to appeal decisions by the Secretary of State and inspectors) and the way in which automatic cost capping only applies at first instance.
The Government consulted in 2015 on proposals to amend the automatic cost capping system, partly to seek to comply with the CJEU ruling and partly to tighten up on the process where it could. Particularly contentious elements included proposing that claimants should submit a schedule of their financial resources when commencing the proceedings so as to allow for argument as to whether the cap should be increased in the particular case, a proposal that cost capping should only be confirmed once a claim had received permission to proceed to a full hearing (ie had been ruled to be arguable) and a proposal to double the standard caps to £10,000 (for individuals) and £20,000 for all other categories of claimant.
The Government has now published on 18 November 2016 Costs Protection In Environmental Claims, its response to that consultation document.
It has stepped back from the more contentious proposals. In summary it proposes that the Civil Procedure Rules be amended to:
– extend Aarhus cost capping to statutory challenges engaging EU law based statutes (this would bring to an end the nonsense of the current Venn litigation saga, in which the refusals of first Ouseley J on 15 August 2016 and then Lewison LJ on 3 November 2016 to grant permission for Ms Venn to appeal are worth a read – further background in this Landmark Chambers update).
– give more certainty that there will be costs protection in Court of Appeal cases “where this is necessary to prevent the proceedings from being prohibitively expensive for the claimant”. The Government will invite the Supreme Court to set equivalent rules to apply to appeals that it hears. So not an automatic system for appeals but clearer guidance.
– refine a definition of “members of the public” who are entitled to Aarhus cost capping. I take this as code for removing the ability for local authority claimants to obtain automatic Aarhus cost capping protection, subject to the outcome of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee’s consideration as to whether Hillingdon Council, and other local authorities engaged in the judicial review of the Government’s decision to proceed with HS2, qualify for protection under the Convention (following the ruling of the Court of Appeal on 11 March 2015 that they do under the Civil Procedure Rules – which may have been drawn unnecessarily widely).
– allow parties to make applications to reduce or increase the caps in particular cases. The test will be that the costs of proceedings must “neither be subjectively prohibitively expensive (they must not exceed the financial resources of the claimant) nor appear to be objectively unreasonable” (ie that set out by the CJEU in C-260/11 Edwards v Environment Agency (11 April 2013). To make its case, the claimant would need to “provide information on significant assets, income, liabilities and expenditure. This information would take account of any third-party funding which the claimant had received”.
– clarify that where there are multiple claimants, a separate cap applies to each claimant (reflecting incidentally the approach recently taken in R (Birchall Gardens LLP and Tarmac Trading Limited) v Hertfordshire County Council (Holgate J, 4 November 2016)).
The Government does not intend to extend the Aarhus cost capping system to private nuisance cases (the subject of proceedings currently before the European Court of Human Rights: 39714/15 Austin v. UK) or similar non public law cases that raise environmental issues. Nor does it intend to increase the standard caps or to delay cost capping to beyond the permission stage.
James Maurici QC has prepared a useful comparative table of the proposals in the consultation paper and those in the response document.
Whilst the Government seeks to limit the circumstances in which parties can apply to vary costs caps, stressing the risk of costs orders against parties that do so unreasonably, undoubtedly this will lead to additional pre-hearing sparring and uncertainty (which is not to criticise the proposal – it has sometimes been galling to see claimants obtain automatic costs protection at the standard level, when the claimants’ means may be at least equal that of the cash-strapped defendant authority).
In my view the response document seeks to achieve a sensible and reasonable balance and for that reason will no doubt come under attack from all quarters…
Simon Ricketts 19.11.16
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