Budgeting & Costs Management for Litigators - Key Updates & Practical Tips

Introduction

Costs budgeting remains one of the least forgiving areas of civil procedure. A budget filed late can leave a party recovering little more than its court fees and an approved budget can be very difficult to revisit once the case changes shape.

With the simplified costs budgeting pilots now well established, fresh High Court guidance on relief from sanctions and budget variation and a further uplift to the guideline hourly rates, litigators need to know exactly where the risks lie.

This bite-sized webinar cuts straight to the developments that matter and turns them into clear strategies you can apply on your next file: getting the budget right first time, keeping it under control as the case evolves and protecting your costs recovery at the end. Thirty minutes that could safeguard a very significant costs recovery.

What You Will Learn

This short webinar will cover the following:

• Which regime applies to your claim: the standard CPR Part 3 and Precedent H process, or the simplified pilots under Practice Directions 51ZG1, 51ZG2 and 51ZG3 (Precedents Z, RZ and TZ) for Part 7 multi-track claims issued between 6 April 2025 and 6 April 2028 and how to identify this at the outset
• How the pilots work in practice: the different treatment of claims above and below £1 million, the extension of budgeting to certain QOCS personal injury claims in Manchester and Birmingham and the discretionary sanction that replaces the automatic CPR 3.14 penalty
• Deadlines and relief from sanctions: the practical lessons from National House-Building Council v Hodson Developments Ltd, where a budget served some 20 days late left a defendant limited to court fees, while parties one day late who applied promptly obtained relief
• Varying a budget: why Bassey v Whittaker [2026] confirms there is no general discretion to revise an approved budget without a genuine ‘significant development’ under CPR 3.15A and why Precedent T applications must be made promptly
• Protecting recovery at assessment: the CPR 3.18 ‘good reason’ threshold, the treatment of incurred costs and the court’s continuing focus on proportionality
• Rates and resourcing: reflecting the 1 January 2026 guideline hourly rate uplift of 2.28% in budgets and retainers, the Civil Justice Council work on counsel’s fees and a possible new top rate and delegating budgeted work with confidence following the Court of Appeal’s decision in Mazur [2026]
• A short, practical checklist to build into your budgeting workflow, from the first CMC through to final assessment