The Pilot for Access to Public Domain Documents (governed by Practice Direction 51ZH) was originally intended to commence in October 2025 but will now go live from 1^st January 2026.

The pilot will apply to the Commercial Court (including the London Circuit Commercial Court) and the Financial List (except where a party is unrepresented and had not used the Court’s CE File electronic filing system previously). It is intended that there will be a review after 6 months although the pilot is not scheduled to finish until 31^st December 2027.

If the pilot is successful, it will then be extended to other courts – most likely the Business and Property courts first.

The Pilot identifies certain documents as Public Domain Documents. It is intended to only capture documents which as a matter of law enter the public domain when a hearing takes place in public without imposing an undue burden on the parties or the Court. The Pilot will see a change from the current position, whereby an application is required to access the documents, to the default being the provision of the documents.

The main categories of documents covered by the Pilot are:

• Written submissions – skeleton argument and written and opening closing submissions, as well as all other submissions provided to the judge during the course of the hearing
• Witness statements/affidavits
• Expert reports (including annexes and exhibits)

How does it work?
The documents will be accessed via CE-File which is the court’s existing system with the parties filing the documents themselves in the appropriate category.

There will be a default filing period for documents. This will be from the day they enter the public domain by being referred to in a court hearing and ending at 16:00 14 days later unless otherwise ordered or agreed by the parties.

As filing will be the default position any party who wishes to limit or not file will need to seek an order to that effect before the filing deadline (Filing Modification Orders – FMOs).

The PD contains a provision for an order to be made compelling parties to make the filing and could, if not complied with, result in appropriate sanctions such as contempt of court.

It will be the responsibility of the lawyers to upload the documents. Further information can be found in the accompanying Guidance Note.

Things to Note:
The most important thing is to be aware that if you are acting in a case which comes under the Pilot then your report will become a Public Domain Document once your evidence is given in open court. If the hearing is private, then the report will not become a Public Domain Document.

All Experts should read and familiarise themselves with both the Practice Direction and the Guidance.

Although the current scope of the Pilot is limited it is likely that in the future this will apply across the board in the civil courts and your reports will automatically become Public Domain Documents.

You should:

• Check with the instructing party whether the case will be dealt with under the pilot.
• Discuss with the instructing party when your report will be first used or referred to. It is likely that this will be when you give evidence in chief and this will be when it becomes publicly available.
• Discuss with your instructing party about how any sensitive information might be used in your report and how they would like it dealt with.
• Do not include your own personal information, other than that which is required by the procedural rules.  For example, consider not including email or telephone numbers. Remember to use your business address and not your personal one. It maybe that you consider having a separate registered business address if you work from home.
• Consider your personal media profile and the information that is publicly available – especially if it is likely that your report could led to harassment or social media comments.

The Committee intends to review the Pilot after 6 months of operation. We would appreciate any details of your experiences with the Pilot to inform our engagement with the Committee’s review.

The Academy’s GDPR guidance turned 5 this year so we thought it was a good time to review it in the light of a better understanding of how GDPR has been implemented in practice. One of the challenges of developing guidance for our expert members is they cover a wide range of specialisms and as a result deal with widely differing types of personal information. The material needed by a medical or psychiatric expert to assess a personal injury is clearly very different from that used by an accountant to assess the value of a business.

In addition while some experts work within large consulting firms many are micro-businesses who don’t have the benefit of in-house egal advice but still have to negotiate the (sometimes onerous)  privacy responsibilities passed down to them by instructing solicitors.

 

Our guidance is designed to help members consider for themselves what aspects of their work are covered by GDPR in a structured way and is linked to a model privacy policy that can be used in a ‘pick and mix’ way to include only those sections that are relevant.  We recommend micro-business or individual expert read the ICO’s small business guide alongside our guidance and remind you that you are almost certainly required to register and pay the required annual fee.

 

The Academy  provides a range of practical advice and guidance on other topics such as conficts, Joint Statements, privilege and so on which is available at no charge to members in the Academy’s Knowledge Hub.

Members can also call our Technical Helpline for help and advice on ethical and practical issues from dealing with instructions to getting paid.

If you would like to join the Academy please complete our Pre-Application Questionnaire and we’ll help you identify the appropriate membership level for you. Other benefits of membership regular member meetings to discuss issues affecting experts and access to specialised PI insurance.

The Academy held its Annual General Meeting on 14 October. As with most similar organisations, this is an important element of the Academy’s governance. Several decisions are reserved to the membership in general meeting. These include the appointment of new members of council, the election of officers and the adoption of accounts.

The following officers were elected:

• Chair: William Hooper
• Deputy Chair: Nigel Young
• Vice Chair: Mike Allen (appointed)
• Secretary: Stuart Broom
• Treasurer: Joe Skilton.

The following were elected to join the Council:

• David Cannell
• Helen Gregory
• Derek Nelson
• Syed Turab

Departing members of Council who stood down were thanked for their contributions.

The full Council meets twice a year, in June and November, and the Executive Committee once a month.

If you would like to help with the running of the Academy or stand for election to Council please contact us, volunteers are always welcome!

 

 

The Academy is the professional society and accrediting body for expert witnesses of all disciplines, independently run by experts for experts and those using them.

We’re proud to have  Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury as our President with support from a range of legal luminaries with Chief Executive Nicola Cohen running the team who support members on a day to day basis.

But the  great strength of the Academy is the contribution made by its members to the direction and running of the organisation through the Executive who direct management & finance and Council who set  the agenda for the future and provide expert-led input into our guidance and activities.

Our AGM will be on 14^th October 2025 and this online event will bring the opportunity for members to elect their representatives to Council for next year.  If you’re a member and haven’t received an invitation please contact the Academy office.

Council meets formally twice a year and we have working groups for subjects as diverse as marketing, standards, formal consultations and AI. Current members include architects, accountants, insurance & IT experts. We’re keen to hear from members in as wide a range of specialisms as possible so whatever your interests please get in touch.

Council Members are elected for a three year term and may hold office for no more than two consecutive terms. Details of the roles and duties are available here.

If you would like to stand for election please complete the online Nomination Form and Election Address by noon on 3rd September. Please note that only Full Members and Fellows are eligible to stand for Council but Associate Members who are interested in contributing are welcome to get in touch, there is always something you can do to help!

Fans of the late, great Steve Wright will remember the amusing and amazing factoids that peppered his afternoon radio show. But ‘factoid’ also means something that is repeated or believed but isn’t actually a fact.

Experts of course need to make sure they only deal with established facts and make it clear when there are disagreements or doubt over the status of the assumed facts that underlie their evidence.

Two recent cases have pointed up the need for care in this area.  In Toppan Holdings Ltd & Anor v Augusta/Simply , a case involving defects in the design and construction of a care home, expert accountancy and valuation evidence was required. Unfortunately while all gave helpful guidance to the court as the judge commented the Defendant’s expert was “in greater difficulties because of the complete absence of any factual evidence advanced by Simply.  Many parts of his report were based upon assumptions which were speculative and not supported by any factual evidence.” His cause was also not assisted by the lack of any mention of defects in his report. When cross examined, “he agreed he should have considered the defects but could not explain whether it was a deliberate omission or “… whether I just missed this.  I don’t know.”  This was more than somewhat surprising given the case was principally about the impact the defects had on the value and profitability of care home.”

In Ruby Properties v  James Alistair Watt  a dispute about the sale and purchase of a pilot training school the accountancy expert was not provided with data from an account system or the accounts for the company. Instead it was a document prepared in part from an accounts system and partly from witnesses recollections and assumptions and without the original records being disclosed.  Once the witness had conceded that “the spreadsheet was very much his subjective assessment which he had done from “feeling,  rather than mathematically” the accountancy experts evidence was, as the judge put it had “no factual foundation”.

It is clearly difficult for an expert when a client failed to provide the information they need.  An expert in Australia demonstrated that the best way to deal with this issue is to explain the limitations of the evidence and the limitations that places on your report. In that caser the judge concluded that within those limitations the expert “was entitled to express significant concern as to the profitability and financial viability of the entities”  and that “the evidence enables the Court to have confidence in his valuation opinion”.

The moral of these stories is to be wary of incomplete or unsupported facts and make sure that you state any issues or limitations in your report. For advice and guidance on giving expert evidence, including our  Model Form of Expert’s Report and  practical advice and guidance on topics such as GDPR, Joint Statements, privilege and so on see the Academy’s Knowledge Hub.

ure is from The Guardian.

A recent case about a snowmobile accident (Cannestra v McLaren Automotive Events) has been much commented on because the Claimant seems to have constructed a version of events somewhat at odds with his comments at the time that ”it was all his own fault” . But as the judge sat through the expert evidence from both sides he could have been forgiven for thinking he was trapped in a story with an unremittingly downward plot, like Hamlet or Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

At the top end of the scale was an expert whose report was “thoughtful and well researched. He gave evidence openly and flexibly, as an expert should. “  but the judge commented with some puzzlement at the omission, presumably for tactical reasons, of an opinion on a technical key issue in the case.

Stepping down a level an expert who was clearly doing his best to assist the Court and was “precise, logical and well prepared” was undermined by a tendency to focus on his party’s case and ignore the other side’s. An issue that in other circumstances might have drawn more substantive criticism.

Aa third expert managed to take things down another notch.  The evidence of a helpful and straight forward expert was  “deeply faulted by inaccurate and unlikely assumptions” not least that his assumption of maximum acceleration would have led to a completely different outcome than the accident that in fact took place.

But the nadir of the expert evidence was reached by an expert who appears to have taken an extraordinarily combative approach. The judge concluded he was “a partial witness who acted as an advocate for the Defendant’s case. He not only ignored the Claimant’s evidence and adopted the guides’ evidence, he positively sought to persuade the Court to find facts in the Defendant’s favour. His report was littered with errors and illogicality. His research on modes of operation of SMs was flimsy and unimpressive. He strayed into accident reconstruction. He made things up in the witness box and he estimated facts when the actual facts were staring him in the face.   I am unable to rely on the vast majority of his evidence. “.

Unfortunately experts can’t generally rely on their opposite numbers drawing judicial fire quite so effectively. So it’s critical to remember that where there are two factual versions of events an expert should consider both versions and any assumptions must be realistic and checked for illogical consequences.

For guidance on best practice such the Model Form of Expert’s Report and Guidance Notes on Meetings of Experts, Contingency Fees & Remote Evidence see the Academy’s Knowledge Hub.

In March 2025 the Family Procedure Rule Committee initiated a consultation on proposed changes to the Family Procedure Rules (FPR) and the associated Practice Directions (PD) for experts in family law children proceedings. These changes involve a requirement for an expert witness to be a ‘regulated expert’ which is defined in FPR 25.2

The Academy sought input from members with experience in the relevant areas. Our response notes that the FPC are responding to a range of problems involving unscientific evidence being put forward in family cases, where theories are sometimes advanced without appropriate supporting evidence. In summary we consider the proposed amendments to be adequate, limited as they are to Family Law Children proceedings. We would, however, have preferred the FPR Committee to have addressed the problem of unscientific evidence directly.

The reasoning and recommendations we made are set out in full in our response to the consultation. We are grateful to everyone who contributed.

In February The Transparency and Open Justice Board published proposed key objectives to guide the Board’s work. These related to timely and effective access to information about cases, timely and effective access to core documents and effective access to hearings. The Board invited comments on the key objectives and The Academy has responded as follows;

Do you agree that these are the correct objectives? 

We support the principles of open justice and consider that objectives set out the goal of open justice.

Do you think there is something that has been missed from the objectives? If yes, what else do you think should be included?

We understand that the Key Objectives are the first stage of planned reform. They will be used, going forward, to guide the work undertaken by the Board and to identify areas where change might be made and to measure the outcomes of change. It is unclear how such outcomes will be measured and recorded. There appears to be no formal impact assessment which might have usefully addressed some of the positive and negative concerns.

We would suggest that the specifics of the objectives will need to be clarified prior to implementation. For example, what precisely is meant by timeliness? There is a tension between timeliness from an open justice point of view and the risks of cases being played out in public at the same time as in court.

There is some concern within the Expert Witness Community as to the possible negative impact and the potential for reducing the pool of quality expert witnesses available and that in some cases there could be safety concerns relating to both the experts and the use of their reports.

We note that it is suggested that the Courts and Tribunals in Scotland and Northern Ireland would also be encouraged to adopt the objectives with appropriate modifications. This would seem to be a sensible approach as consistency across jurisdictions is to be welcomed. It will also underline the importance of the key objectives particularly in making justice more accessible.

Although it is not directly answering the question we believe it is important to note that there are some concerns with regard to “open reporting” and “open documents”. It is, in our view, essential that open reporting should not in any way compromise those involved in the justice process.

The need for open justice needs to be balanced against the risks of witnesses and experts being discouraged from giving evidence by the knowledge that their statements will be published. This could open them up to professional and personal criticism that goes well beyond the current risk of judicial criticism.

We are concerned that in some cases it may limit the number of those giving evidence particularly in some areas such as paediatric medicine where the pool of willing experts is already diminishing.

Open documents. We understand the reasoning behind making documents available. However, as is stated in the explanatory notes there are important issues relating to the timing at which documents should be made available. It is important in the light of possible changes to CPR 5.4 that parties are not discouraged from litigating their disputes in England & Wales because of real or perceived concerns about exposing commercially or personally sensitive information.

It is, of course, a difficult balancing act to ensure that transparency and openness do not come with a higher burden in relation to costs. We would welcome further consultation with regard to the timings and procedures for accessing documents as this is fundamental in meeting the key objectives.

Given that experts are always aware they may be criticised by a judge it’s understandable they might feel a little smug or a frisson of schadenfreude to know that from time to time judges and tribunals are themselves criticised quite severely for their approach to expert evidence.

In an appeal in relation to Disability Living Allowance that had clearly dragged on for many years the Social Security Commissioner concluded that “ The main reason for allowing this appeal has occurred in too many other appeals.  It is wrong to dismiss evidence of a medical practitioner from one party as not “independent” without indicating why while at the same time accepting medical evidence from the other party as “independent”.  He noted that the tribunal had “dismissed without consideration the evidence of a consultant specialist at a major British hospital who specialises in precisely the problem from which the appellant is suffering, and who is in addition fully recognised as an expert medical witness.  That is plainly absurd.”

Similar criticism applied in a completely different field when a First Tier Tribunal include various additional items in an order for remediation of a building fire prevention measures under the Building Safety Act 2022 (Monier Road v Blomfield). In this case the FTT did not set out its reasons, or any professional guidance or previous cases to support the new items or give witnesses or experts on either side the chance to consider them.  As the Upper Tribunal commented “We really have no idea why the panel’s expertise led it to contrary conclusions; nor have the parties. Insofar as the FTT’s decision was reached in reliance, in some undisclosed way, on its own expertise it was unfair and for this additional reason must be set aside.”

In essence both tribunals were held to the same standards as an expert, that is they needed to provide the evidence and reasoning that supported their conclusions and had failed to do so.

Having said that  it is common for parties to attempt to overturn a judge’s view of expert evidence and then fail.  A prominent recent example involved a complex technology case (IBM v LZLabs) in which the expert and factual evidence was deeply entwined.  Despite a judgement described by them as “an impressive piece of work” the appeal court was faced with a  ‘kitchen sink’ application where every adverse finding was in issue.  Refusing permission to appeal they cited the fact that the judge had made copious references to the expert evidence in her judgment and for each ground of appeal had considered the evidence appropriately, together with other evidence where relevant.

So again, applying the same standards as for experts in this case the judge was found to have met the standard. The fact that judges and tribunals sometimes fail to meet the standard should remind all experts that this is a challenging role and that it’s important for experts to keep up to date.

The Academy of Experts provides regularly updated guidance from our  Judicial Committee so you can be sure that you are adopting best practice. This includes for example the Model Form of Expert’s Report and Guidance Notes on Meetings of Experts, Contingency Fees & Remote Evidence. As a member you can also call our Technical Helpline for help and advice on ethical and practical issues from dealing with instructions to getting paid