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Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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The U.K. Arbitration Act 2025 (available at https://bit.ly/4iFPEkf) is not going to save or dramatically change arbitration in England, Wales or Northern Ireland. It contains two provisions of intellectual significance, although of limited practical application. Otherwise, it contains some updating to show that the United Kingdom has noticed what everyone else has noticed. Much of it consists of tweaks to parts of the Arbitration Act 1996 that most people agree do not work as well as they should. Many of the affected rules contain peculiarities of English arbitration law. So, a study of the changes concerned throws some light on them.

The Reform Process

In 2016, perhaps inspired by a rather odd speech of the then-Lord Chief Justice, the U.K. government suggested a 20-years-on review of its arbitration law (Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, “Developing Commercial Law Through the Courts: Rebalancing the Relationship between the Courts and Arbitration,” Bailii Lecture 2016, (March 9, 2016) (available at https://bit.ly/3SgSxgs). Lord Thomas suggested that the restrictions on the right of appeal in section 69 of the 1996 Act had dried up the quality of commercial cases going through the courts.