News
CPR Amendments - Procedure Rules (OCMC PD 51R)
The Master of the Rolls and the Courts Minister have signed the 125th Practice Direction Update to provide for further functionalities within the Online Civil Money Claims (OCMC) Pilot, PD51R.
The PD is effective immediately i.e. from 11am, 16th November 2020. The pilot PD 51R currently runs until 30 November 2021.
The main changes effected by this PD Update are to:
- move current new features relating to, ‘directions questionnaires online’ and, ‘legal advisers’ into standard features, thus making them more widely available in the pilot.
- make changes in relation to the current mediation new feature, making it available as a standard feature, but subject to a financial filter, so that where the claim is for an amount less than £500, parties have to opt out of mediation; parties for claims above £500 will continue to have to opt in to mediation.
- enable claims where the defence is a defence of the whole of the claim, to continue within the pilot, even though the defendant is only able to operate on paper. If the defendant cannot/does not want to engage on-line, but has no objection to the claim continuing in the pilot, the paper response that they send back to the court will be scanned and uploaded digitally. This allows the claim to be continued in the pilot: the defendant can continue receiving papers while the claimant can continue to engage digitally.
- correct some minor drafting inconsistencies