Refund of trial fees for trial that was cancelled by the court.

benawhile

I am in dispute with a builder over 2 specific items and initiated 2 small claims in succession, which seemed to be allowed by the on line process.

A hearing was scheduled for August 2021 and I paid the £355 trial fee. But it was a “second place” hearing, and the first place hearing went ahead instead, ( I was given less than 24 hrs notice) so my own was postponed until further notice.

For some reason a decision was then made by the judge that the case should be re-evaluated.

The next I knew was on the 21st October I was told that an allocation hearing would be held for 30 mins by phone on December 13th, at this hearing, I was told that the case would be elevated to fast track.

Yesterday I received the directions and a demand for another trial fee of £545, the current fast track fee, so I phoned the court to ask for the earlier fee to be refunded.

They told me that there was no mechanism for that and my case was an unusual one, and that I would have to write to the court enquiries department and they would ask the judge to refund. I protested that asking the judge to intervene to refund money months before he hears my case would prejudice it and this was purely an admin matter but they refused to take this on board.

I think this is ridiculous, surely there would be an admin department in a court? If there is the enquiries department were keeping it secret. Could anyone advise please?

MattMattMattUK

How have you received the requests for those amounts as they do not seem to line up with the published fees?

benawhile

They are the correct fees, the current list EX50 is from September 2021. £335 was last years rate.Both demands were sent from the court in the Notice of Allocation, (335) and Notice of Trial Date, (545)