Practice direction amendments in force from 11 am on Monday 18 March 2019

The Ministry of Justice has signed the 106th update—practice direction amendments which makes amendments to CPR PD 51R and CPR PD 51S. The amendments come into force at 11 am on Monday 18 March 2019. The amendments add additional components to the Online Civil Money Claims (OCMC) scheme dealing with advising when a claim has been settled.

The Ministry of Justice have advised that the update deals with the following:

1.  it embeds, in the OCMC process, a general notification feature to enable the claimant to notify the court that a claim has been settled. This will prompt the court to mark a claim as stayed unless the defendant objects. This amendment has required changes to CPR PD 51R

2.  clarification and minor changes to provisions in both CPR PD 51R and CPR PD 51S regarding the time for submitting forms to the court

The Ministry of Justice has also advised that there will a series of further practice direction updates as additional functionality and progressive adaptations are made to the OCMC scheme. It is intended that the practice direction updates will be issue twice a year and will not coincide with the general April and October updates. While this update has provided less than a working days notice of the changes the Ministry of Justice has stated that where the modifications are significant it is aiming to maximise notification of the changes where possible.

For a copy of the changes, see here.