Provisional assessment

Provisional assessment is a procedure which has been in force since 1 April 2013.

Despite being piloted into the county courts, provisional assessment applies in both the County Court and the High Court.

The provisional assessment procedure applies to claims valued up to £75,000 and the procedure is set out in CPR 47 and CPR PD 47.

It is important to be aware that the provisional assessment is a form of detailed assessment and many of the stages of detailed assessment still have to be complied with if dealing with provisional assessment. It is therefore essential to understand all the stages that need to be complied with and diarise sufficient

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Dispute Resolution analysis: In this case, the Court of Appeal gave guidance on what constituted a ‘judgment’ for the purpose of CPR 36.17(1). Further, the court held that split-liability Part 36 offers can engage the costs recoverability provisions set out in CPR 36.17(4), thereby effectively overruling the arguments which culminated in the decision in Mundy v TUI UK Ltd. However, this was not the end of the matter. Dismissing the appeal, the Court of Appeal held that on the facts of this case, the outcome was less advantageous than the proposals contained in the claimant’s Part 36 offer. Further, the court held that there was no reason to depart from the fixed costs regime, and that it would not be ‘unjust’ to confine the claimant’s solicitors to fixed costs recoverability. Now that the uncertainty which followed Mundy has been clarified by the court, this could mark a resurgence in parties making split-liability Part 36 offers. Written by Charlotte Payne, barrister at 7KBW.

PI & Clinical Negligence weekly highlights—29 January 2026

This week's edition of PI & Clinical Negligence weekly highlights includes a procedural update to the certificate of service and a clinical negligence decision on the importance of contemporaneous record-keeping and the difficulty of establishing contributory negligence in clinical settings. In addition, we have our usual round-up of other news, cases, webinars, New Law Journal articles of interest and guidance on how to submit a case to be published on the LexisNexis quantum database.

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PI & Clinical Negligence analysis: Upon appeal, the High Court found that a claimant casual footballer paying to play a ‘knockabout’ game at school premises where there were no arrangements in place to retrieve a ball kicked out of play into another part of the defendant’s sports facilities (adjacent sports playing fields) caused his own injury when he climbed a 2.1m gate and severely lacerated his hand. The claimant was a trespasser while climbing the gate between two adjacent parts of the premises where he was not a trespasser. The defendant’s duty of care did not extend to providing any system or facilities to aid ball retrievable, despite the trial judge’s findings that doing nothing and waiting was ‘not what football players would do’. The threshold test imposing a duty of care was not met because the claimant decided to climb the locked gate to gain access to adjacent playing fields. What amounts to ‘reasonable’ safety of visitors under section 2(2) and (5) of the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 (OLA 1957) appears to fall firmly within the characteristics equating to a definition of ‘reasonable’ amounting to ‘adequate’, rather than equating to the dictionary definition of reasonable ‘based on or using good judgment and therefore fair and practical’. On the facts and circumstances of this case the sports premises were safe, despite there being no facility for ball retrieval. The danger to the claimant only arose because the claimant decided to take a risk to climb a gate that was an obvious danger. Written by Abigail Holt, barrister at Garden Court Chambers.

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