News Release

5 March 2008

05/08

Increased Claims In The Technology And Construction Court

The Technology and Construction Court (TCC) Annual Report, outlining how it has handled business and cases during 2006/07, showed a continuing increase in claims issued in London and in the major Regional centres.

The Technology and Construction Court (TCC) is a specialist court that deals primarily with litigation arising in the field of construction and technology, covering areas that include traditional ‘building’ cases, adjudication enforcement, arbitration claims, engineering disputes, professional negligence claims and IT disputes. In addition to London, the work of the TCC is carried out at a number of Regional centres.

Last year saw an increase in the number of new claims brought in the London TCC, with 407 brought compared to 392 in 2005/06. There were also a total of 838 applications (including case management hearings and pre-trial reviews) which were dealt with in court, by telephone and some in writing.

There have been a number of key events for the TCC throughout the year, which include the following:

• Regional TCC centres have continued to grow in importance as the number of claims being issued in these centres has increased. Birmingham TCC has dealt with 213 claims compared to 108 last year. This also includes a two fold increase in the number of claims issued at the court. Similarly Manchester TCC saw an increase in new cases from 127 to 147.
• After three years as Judge in Charge, Mr Justice Jackson’s tenure has come to a close. He leaves a court which is now recognised as a High Court Jurisdiction requiring judges with full High Court status to deal with complex and high value cases. He is replaced by Mr Justice Vivian Ramsey.
• To examine the statistical effectiveness of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in TCC cases, the court has asked King’s College London to undertake a statistical survey. This will continue until the summer of 2008 and will seek to reveal in what circumstances and at what stage ADR is most successful.    

The full Annual Report is available on the judicial website at http://www.judiciary.gov.uk\docs\tcc_3rd_annual_report.pdf

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