As many practitioners will be aware, the assessment of Court of Protection remains an issue. 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 30 September 2024, Costs Officers were being assigned bills for which supporting papers were received around mid-November 2023, so that has increased slightly to an 11-month backlog.
The admin team were dispatching assessed bills returned by the Costs Officers during the fourth week of September, so there does not appear to be any delay here.
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 second week of June 2024.
In terms of Final Costs Certificates, the Court remains broadly up to date in relation to these.