Civil Courts: Civil Process

The Civil Procedure Act 1997 was passed to implement the Woolf Report and in April 1999, the new Civil Procedure Rules came into effect

These reforms were made on the basis of four major criticisms made by Lord Woolf of the old civil justice system:

• cost
• delay
• complexity
• too adversarial

Lord Woolf's philosophy was that the adversarial process is not suitable for civil law

Litigation should be a last resort and we must promote cooperation and settlement in an inquisitorial way

Lord Woolf's goal was a fundamental change of culture. He stated that a civil justice system should:

• be just in the results it delivers
• be fair in the way that it treats litigants
• deal with cases at a reasonable speed
• be understandable to those who use it
• be effective, adequately resourced and organised
• offer appropriate procedures at a reasonable cost

The Civil Procedure Rules 1998

Part one of the CPR emphasises their main purpose as having an overriding objective of enabling the court to deal with cases 'justly'. Courts must seek to further this objective by managing cases 'actively'

How was this achieved?:

Lord Woolf's reforms can be split into four broad areas:

• Simplification of procedures
• Judicial case management
• Pre action protocols
• Encouragement of ADR