PME v The Scout Association

An appeal from an authorised court officer in detailed assessment proceedings is a rehearing of the oral hearing that produced the appealed decision. It is not an opportunity to reopen every disputed item considered during the earlier paper provisional assessment.

A party must identify the items challenged when requesting an oral hearing. The subsequent appeal is confined to the decisions made on those identified items.

The appellant challenged an order of Master Leonard in the Senior Courts Costs Office. The underlying costs claim had been provisionally assessed by an authorised court officer. The appellant requested an oral hearing on hourly rates and documents time, but pursued only the hourly-rates issue.

The appellant later sought a de novo detailed assessment of all disputed items. Master Leonard ruled that the appeal was limited to the remaining hourly-rates issue. The question before the High Court was whether CPR 47.24 required a rehearing of the detailed assessment as a whole or only of the oral hearing giving rise to the appealed decision.

1. Appeal dismissed. The order limiting the appeal to the remaining hourly-rates issue was correct.

2. Provisional assessment forms part of the detailed assessment procedure, but the paper exercise is not a hearing. It is conducted without the parties attending and does not itself produce a decision capable of appeal where an oral hearing is requested.

3. Under CPR 47.15(7) and (8), a party wishing to challenge a provisional assessment must request an oral hearing within 21 days and identify the item or items to be reviewed. If no request is made, the provisional assessment becomes binding, save in exceptional circumstances.

4. The phrase in CPR 47.24 requiring the court to rehear the proceedings giving rise to the appealed decision refers to the oral proceedings before the authorised court officer, not the detailed assessment proceedings as a whole. The appeal is therefore confined to the issues identified for, and decided at, that oral hearing.

5. The authorities concerning the breadth of a rehearing under earlier procedural rules, including Tanfern Limited v Cameron-MacDonald and EL Du Pont De Nemours and Co v St Dupont, did not determine which proceedings were to be reheard under the present rules.

6. A wider construction would risk substantial waste of court and party resources and conflict with the Overriding Objective.

• Senior Courts Costs Office: Master Leonard ordered that the detailed assessment proceed only on the remaining issue of hourly rates.
• High Court (Queen's Bench Division): The appeal against that order was dismissed.