Lonsdale v Bar Standards Board & Ors

In costs proceedings arising from a judicial review involving a public regulator, the successful party is not automatically entitled to recover all its costs. The court may depart from the conventional costs approach where the dispute concerns a jurisdictional issue of wider regulatory importance, the sum originally in issue is modest, and the costs claimed are disproportionate. The court must consider the overall circumstances and the overriding objective. A proportionate sum may be summarily assessed even where the successful party is entitled in principle to its costs.

The claimant challenged costs imposed in disciplinary proceedings brought by the Bar Standards Board. The substantive judicial review included a jurisdiction ground concerning whether those disciplinary costs were payable. On 8 October 2014 the court found for the defendant on that ground and held that the defendant was entitled to the disciplinary costs claimed.

The court reserved the consequential costs issue and received written submissions. The present judgment concerned only the costs of the 8 October hearing. The original dispute involved £4,379, while the defendant calculated its total costs at £56,690.20 and sought £23,329.20.

1. Costs discretion. The court held that the conventional approach, under which the successful party generally recovers its costs, did not apply automatically. The court was required to assess the costs issue in the light of the overriding objective and the circumstances as a whole.
2. Relevant circumstances. It was material that Ground 2 raised a jurisdictional question likely to affect other cases, and that the Bar Standards Board was acting as a public regulator concerned with maintaining professional standards. Those matters gave the defendant a legitimate wider interest in obtaining a ruling. It was also material that the original dispute concerned only £4,379, whereas the costs claimed were substantially greater.
3. Proportionality. Although the defendant had succeeded on the live Ground 2 issue and was entitled in principle to its costs, ordering the full sum claimed would not have been proportionate to the amount in issue. The claimant’s conditional offers to discontinue did not justify making no order for costs because they depended on the defendant abandoning the disciplinary costs already ordered.
4. Order. The costs of the hearing on 8 October 2014 were summarily assessed at £5,000, payable by the claimant to the defendant. No further order was made concerning the acknowledgment of service costs because the judicial review was continuing or might continue.

Not stated in the judgment.