In a surprise development, Lord Justice Jackson, the architect of the costs budgeting regime, has come out in support of the retention, largely unchanged, of costs budgeting.

The one thing we can now be certain of is that the extension of fixed fees will come sooner rather than later. This would immediately:

• Remove the need for costs budgeting in those cases and thus save court time avoiding the need for costs management hearings.
• Ensure “proportionality” of the costs recovered.
• Save further court time by reducing the number of provisional/detailed assessments.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that the total balls-up of the introduction of the Jackson reforms is a cunning plan to make fixed costs across the board inevitable.