Practice Note for the London Circuit Commercial Court – Lodging of bundles and skeletons for applications

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London circuit commercial court – lodging of bundles and skeletons for applications.

  1. There has been an ever increasing habit of parties lodging materials for use in connection with applications late and piecemeal. This has disrupted pre reading for applications and has resulted in applications over running.
  2. The Practice is that set out in Paragraph F6.3 of the Commercial Court Guide, which applies to applications in the London Circuit Commercial Court by operation of Paragraph F1.1 of the Circuit Commercial Court Guide. In summary this requires that:
    a. An application bundles and the Case Management Bundle must be lodged by no later than 12 noon one clear day before the date fixed for the hearing. Authorities bundles must be lodged at the same time. For hearings listed in the Friday Applications List this means that they must be lodged by no later than 12 noon on the Wednesday prior to the hearing;
    b. Skeletons must be provided by no later than 12 Noon on the working day before the date fixed for the hearing. For hearings listed in the Friday Applications List this means that they must be lodged by no later than 12 noon on the Thursday prior to the hearing;
    The London Circuit Commercial Court operates electronically by default. For that reason what must be lodged are electronic hearing CMC and authorities bundles.
  3. Each bundle must be prepared in accordance with Appendix C of the Circuit Commercial Court Guide. Particular attention is drawn to (a) the need to ensure that PDF page numbering matches the pagination of the bundle concerned (Appendix C, Para.2); (b) The need for bookmarking (Appendix C, Para.3) and the need to ensure that each page of each document included in the bundle has been subjected to OCR conversion (Appendix C, Para. 4) so as to enable highlighting of the pages concerned or parts of it. Skeleons must be lodged in Word format.
  4. In future strict adherence to the timings referred to in Paragraph 2 above will be required. It is likely that where these timings are not complied with the application will be removed from the list and will be refixed on the first available date that is convenient to the Court and/or a cost sanction imposed.
  5. Where bundles do not comply with Appendix C and in particular those parts identified in Paragraph 3 above, it is likely that a costs sanction involving disallowing some or all of the costs of preparing the bundle concerned will be disallowed.
  6. The practice of lodging revised bundles outside the time limits referred to above will not be permitted. Only supplemental bundles containing documents that have been served or supplied or the need for which has become apparent after expiry of the time limits referred to in Paragraph 2(a) above will be permitted to be lodged after expiry of the time limits referred to in Paragraph 2(a).
  7. This Practice note has been issued with the concurrence of the Judge in Charge of the Commercial Court.

HHJ Mark Pelling KC
Judge in Charge, London Circuit Commercial Court
April 2024

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