As many practitioners will be aware, the assessment of Court of Protection bills has been somewhat of an issue in the last 12 months+. There have been significant delays in the processing side and the actual assessment of the bills. However, the Court have been pro-active in trying to keep everyone up to date with their service user updates.
Whilst we all live in hope that at some point, the service user updates will no longer be required, for the moment they are providing a fairly accurate guide as to the position and queue length.
As of 24 June 2024, Costs Officers were being assigned bills for which supporting papers were received around mid-August 2023, so that remains a 10 month backlog.
The admin team were dispatching assessed bills returned by the Costs Officers during the first week of June.
With regards to e-filings, those that have been submitted – but have not yet been accepted or rejected – were being worked on with the latest filings submitted around the 1st week of March 2024.
In terms of Final Costs Certificates, the Court remains broadly up-to-date in relation to these.