A developer seeking permission to build a 197-dwelling project on land in Warfield, Bracknell has had his case dismissed in a judgment that examines the court’s pandemic and post-pandemic filing regime.
According to the ruing, handed down today, development company Home Farm Land was seeking to file a claim against an outline refusal of planning permission dated 22 September 2002. Under the rules of the court, the company had until 3 November to file legal papers.
The company’s planning director, Eric Walton, was, according to the ruling, having difficulties filing the papers electronically on 2 November, the day before the deadline.
On 3 November, he arranged for a courier to deposit hard copies of the papers to the drop box in the foyer of the Rolls Building of the High Court. According to the ruling, the papers were deposited at 15.45. The box was not emptied util the next day and the filing was considered out-of-time.
The company appealed, saying that the papers should be regarded as being filed in time. According to the ruling, it had also made other attempts to file and made other errors.
However, Mrs Justice Lang ruled today that the papers were indeed late and the case could not be filed.
Even so, the ruling examines the way in which filing cases has been changed by the pandemic.
Before March 2020, while electronic filing was encouraged, counters in the Rolls Building were available for claimants to file cases with a member of court staff.
Court staff were able to examine the filing, refuse it immediately if it was incorrect, or if the correct fee had not been paid, and file it immediately if everything was in order.
However, during the pandemic the counters closed and were replaced with a drop box in the foyer that was emptied and proceeded by court staff twice a day. According to the ruling, the counters have yet to be reopened.
The case centres on the meaning of Civil Procedure Rule 2.3(1), which states that “filing” means “delivering a document or information, by post or otherwise, to the court office”.
Lawyers for the company claimed that depositing the papers in the drop box fulfilled this obligation.
The judge disagreed.
“In my judgment, the claim form in this case was not filed within the meaning of the definition in CPR 2.3(1) when it was deposited in the drop box,” she said.
“The drop box is in the main reception area of the RCJ and it is not in ‘the court office’ within the meaning of CPR 2.3(1) (see Croke at [19]). It is essentially a dedicated post-box and the mere fact of posting the claim form in the drop box is not sufficient to constitute the act of filing, just as posting the claim form at the Post Office would not amount to filing.
“It could only be filed once it was taken from the drop box to the [court office] and approved for filing by a member of… staff.
“Furthermore, when documents are deposited in the drop box, there is no procedure for recording the name of the case and the time and date on which delivery took place. It would be highly unsatisfactory for such a significant procedural step as filing to take effect without any record of it.”
As well as examining the current filing regime, the case also highlights more general issues.
“The case law illustrates the difficulties that have arisen in practice where litigants seek to file a claim very close to the expiry of the relevant time period,” she said.
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