KEY TAKEAWAYS
- → £253.73 Average hourly rate charged by civil-court expert witnesses for report writing in 2025, so the £750 small claims cap buys under three hours of an average expert's time. (Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey 2025, 2025)
- → 26.6% Share of small claims mediations that ended in settlement in July 2026, from 10,001 mediation appointments, the first forum in which most builder-dispute reports are now read. (HMCTS management information, July 2026, 2026)
- → £750 Average extra sum that UK homeowners who had to pay to put a botched repair right lost, exactly the small claims expert-fee cap (Citizens Advice, Opinium survey, 2026). (Citizens Advice, home repair survey (Opinium), July 2026, 2026)
- → 8,900 Small claims trials held in England and Wales in April to June 2026, three quarters of all civil trials, against 571,000 claims issued in the same quarter. (MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026, 2026)
- → 94% Share of the 368,000 county court judgments in April to June 2026 that were default judgments, where no expert report was ever needed. (MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026, 2026)
- → £455 Court fee to issue a claim worth £5,000.01 to £10,000, before a £346 hearing fee, so the court's own fees can exceed the recoverable expert fee on a small claim. (HMCTS civil court fees, EX50, 2026)
- → property and building disputes Named in CPR 26.15 Table 1 as fast track complexity band 4, the highest fixed-costs band, once a building claim exceeds £10,000. (Civil Procedure Rules, Part 26, 2026)
Anyone who has paid a builder for work that turned out badly reaches the same fork: pay a surveyor to write up the defects, or go to court on photographs and the next builder's quote. The rule that caps what the small claims track gives back for an expert is public, but nobody has set it against what experts charge by the hour, what the court charges to issue and hear the claim, how many claims reach a judge, or the compulsory mediation appointment that now precedes every defended small claim. This guide does that for England and Wales from the Civil Procedure Rules, the court fee schedule, Ministry of Justice statistics and HM Courts and Tribunals Service management information.
The headline is stark. The loser in a small claim can be ordered to repay at most £750 per expert (CPR Practice Direction 27A (small claims track), 2026), and the 2025 average civil-court expert charges £253.73 an hour for report writing (Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey 2025, 2025), so the cap buys under three hours of an average expert's time. Only 14% of county court claims were defended in the latest quarter and 94% of judgments were entered by default (MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026, 2026), so most claimants never reach the hearing at which a report would be read. And by coincidence the average extra sum a homeowner paid to put a botched repair right was also £750(Citizens Advice, home repair survey (Opinium), July 2026, 2026). The site's guide to who pays expert witness fees explains the recovery rules; this page is about the figures that sit behind them.
1 What Is the Most You Can Recover for a Surveyor's Report in the Small Claims Court? £750 per Expert
On the small claims track in England and Wales the court may order the losing party to pay a sum not exceeding £750 for each expert's fees, plus up to £95 a day for loss of earnings and £260 for legal advice only where an injunction or specific performance is claimed (CPR Practice Direction 27A (small claims track), 2026). Nothing is recoverable for a report the court never gave permission for.
| RULE OR FIGURE | VALUE | SOURCE |
|---|---|---|
| Expert fees recoverable per expert (small claims practice direction) | £750 | CPR Practice Direction 27A (small claims track) |
| Loss of earnings or leave recoverable per person per day (PD 27A 7.3(1)) | £95 | CPR Practice Direction 27A (small claims track) |
| Legal advice recoverable in a claim including an injunction or specific performance (PD 27A 7.2) | £260 | CPR Practice Direction 27A (small claims track) |
| Small claims track ceiling (CPR 26.9) | £10,000 | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 26 |
| Expert evidence at a small claims hearing (CPR 27.5) | permission of the court | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 27 |
| Standard small claims direction on expert reports (PD 27A Appendix B para 5) | express permission | CPR Practice Direction 27A (small claims track) |
| Permission rule for expert evidence on every track (CPR 35.4(1)) | call an expert | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 35 |
| What an application for permission must contain (CPR 35.4(2)) | estimate of the costs | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 35 |
| Court's power over recoverable expert fees (CPR 35.4(4)) | may limit the amount | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 35 |
| Restriction on expert evidence (CPR 35.1) | reasonably required | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 35 |
| Costs the court may order on the small claims track (CPR 27.14(2)) | behaved unreasonably | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 27 |
| Orton v Barclays Bank (CA, 31 July 2026): value of the small claim | £2,750 | Orton v Barclays Bank UK PLC [2026] EWCA Civ 1025 |
| Orton v Barclays Bank: costs order under 27.14(2)(g) that the Court of Appeal set aside | £2,132.88 | Orton v Barclays Bank UK PLC [2026] EWCA Civ 1025 |
| Orton v Barclays Bank: test for unreasonable behaviour | permit of a reasonable explanation | Orton v Barclays Bank UK PLC [2026] EWCA Civ 1025 |
The cap is on recovery, not on the fee: the surveyor charges what the engagement letter says, and the practice direction limits only what the court can order the other side to repay, for an expert the court has allowed in. The permission rule is absolute: no expert may give evidence at a small claims hearing, in writing or in person, without the court's permission (Civil Procedure Rules, Part 27, 2026), and the standard small claims directions repeat that no party may rely on an expert's report without express permission granted beforehand (CPR Practice Direction 27A (small claims track), 2026). The site's guide to the CPR Part 35 expert witness report sets out what a compliant report must contain.
The rest of the small claims costs list is short and exhaustive: fixed issue costs, the court fees paid, reasonable travel, the daily loss-of-earnings allowance, the capped expert fee, and further costs only against a party who has behaved unreasonably (Civil Procedure Rules, Part 27, 2026). How high that last bar sits was settled by the Court of Appeal in July 2026: in Orton v Barclays Bank a claimant who discontinued a claim worth £2,750 had been ordered to pay £2,132.88 in costs, and the Court of Appeal set the order aside, warning that the approach would blow the scheme of the small claims track to bits (Orton v Barclays Bank UK PLC [2026] EWCA Civ 1025, 2026). The test it endorsed is whether the conduct does not permit of a reasonable explanation. The pre-action practice direction adds the court's steer for low-value disputes: parties should consider a single expert, jointly instructed, with the costs shared equally(CPR Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct, 2026), as the guide to what a single joint expert is explains.
2 What Does an Expert Charge per Hour, and How Much Report Does £750 Buy?
The Bond Solon survey of 525 experts in September 2025 found an average report-writing rate of £238.81 an hour across all courts and £253.73 for civil work, up 25% since 2015 (Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey 2025, 2025). Legal aid pays a surveyor far less: £85 an hour outside London and £115 in London on housing disrepair cases, at rates fixed in 2013 (Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, Schedule 5, 2013).
| RATE OR RULE | VALUE | SOURCE |
|---|---|---|
| Average expert hourly rate for report writing, civil courts (Bond Solon, 2025) | £253.73 | Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey 2025 |
| Average expert hourly rate for report writing, all courts (Bond Solon, 2025) | £238.81 | Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey 2025 |
| Average expert hourly rate, criminal courts (Bond Solon, 2025) | £227.41 | Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey 2025 |
| Average expert hourly rate, family courts (Bond Solon, 2025) | £209.60 | Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey 2025 |
| Legal aid maximum hourly rate, surveyor on housing disrepair, London (rates set in 2013) | £115 | Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, Schedule 5 |
| Legal aid maximum hourly rate, surveyor on housing disrepair, outside London | £85 | Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, Schedule 5 |
| Legal aid maximum hourly rate, surveyor on other work, London and outside | £40 | Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, Schedule 5 |
| Legal aid maximum hourly rate, architect, outside London | £79.20 | Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, Schedule 5 |
| Legal aid maximum hourly rate, consultant engineer, outside London | £72 | Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, Schedule 5 |
| Experts surveyed by Bond Solon, 2025 | 525 | Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey 2025 |
| Rise in the average expert hourly rate since 2015 | 25% | Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey 2025 |
| Experts naming late payment as their most common complaint about instructing solicitors | 33.8% | Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey 2025 |
| RICS rule on conditional or success-based expert fees (PS 3.6) | success-based arrangement | RICS, Surveyors acting as expert witnesses (4th ed.) |
| RICS expert's overriding duty (PS 2.1) | overriding duty | RICS, Surveyors acting as expert witnesses (4th ed.) |
Two published benchmarks bracket what a surveyor's time costs. At the top, the Bond Solon survey's 2025 edition puts the civil average at £253.73 an hour (Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey 2025, 2025). Its limitation: 525 experts answered, most in medical fields, so it describes the expert market as a whole rather than building surveyors. At the bottom, the legal aid regulations fix what the state pays an expert on a funded case: for a surveyor on a housing disrepair claim £85 an hour outside London and £115 in London, and £40 an hour for other surveying work (Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, Schedule 5, 2013). Those rates have not changed since 2013. The site's expert witness cost guide covers how fees are structured; the figures here are the independent ones.
At the civil average, £750 buys under three hours of report writing, before any inspection or costed schedule of remedial work. The expert cannot soften this with a no-win-no-fee arrangement: the RICS professional standard for surveyors acting as expert witnesses says a member shall not take an appointment on any form of conditional or success-based arrangement(RICS, Surveyors acting as expert witnesses (4th ed.), 2023), and states that the expert's overriding duty is to the tribunal, overriding any contractual duty to the client. On a claim under the £10,000 ceiling, then, the report is bought for leverage, not recovery. It is the document that makes a builder's insurer take the letter before claim seriously, which is why the guide to suing a builder for poor workmanship puts independent evidence before the letter.
3 What Are These Claims Worth, and What Does the Court Charge to Hear Them?
Citizens Advice's 2026 survey found one in four UK homeowners had a problem with their last repair job and the 1.7 million who paid extra to fix it lost £750 on average (Citizens Advice, home repair survey (Opinium), July 2026, 2026). A small claim in the top band costs £455 to issue and £346 to hear (HMCTS civil court fees, EX50, 2026); above the small claims ceiling the issue fee is 5% of the claim.
| FIGURE | VALUE | SOURCE |
|---|---|---|
| UK homeowners who had a problem with their most recent repair or improvement job | one in four | Citizens Advice, home repair survey (Opinium), July 2026 |
| Homeowners who faced a problem in the last 18 months | 4.8 million | Citizens Advice, home repair survey (Opinium), July 2026 |
| Homeowners who had to pay extra to put the problem right | 1.7 million | Citizens Advice, home repair survey (Opinium), July 2026 |
| Average extra cost paid to put the problem right | £750 | Citizens Advice, home repair survey (Opinium), July 2026 |
| Share whose extra costs exceeded £5,000 | 10% | Citizens Advice, home repair survey (Opinium), July 2026 |
| Complaints about home repairs to the Citizens Advice consumer service in 2025 | 37,000 | Citizens Advice, home repair survey (Opinium), July 2026 |
| Issue fee, claim up to £300 | £35 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Issue fee, £300.01 to £500 | £50 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Issue fee, £500.01 to £1,000 | £70 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Issue fee, £1,000.01 to £1,500 | £80 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Issue fee, £1,500.01 to £3,000 | £115 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Issue fee, £3,000.01 to £5,000 | £205 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Issue fee, £5,000.01 to £10,000 | £455 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Issue fee, £10,000.01 to £200,000 | 5% | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Small claims hearing fee, claim up to £300 | £27 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Small claims hearing fee, £300.01 to £500 | £59 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Small claims hearing fee, £500.01 to £1,000 | £85 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Small claims hearing fee, £1,000.01 to £1,500 | £123 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Small claims hearing fee, £1,500.01 to £3,000 | £181 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Small claims hearing fee, over £3,000 | £346 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Fast track hearing fee | £619 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Intermediate and multi-track hearing fee | £1,334 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Application fee, on notice | £321 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
| Application fee, by consent or without notice | £126 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
The Citizens Advice survey is the closest thing to a published distribution of claim values. In all, 4.8 million homeowners faced a problem in the preceding eighteen months, 1.7 million paid extra to put it right at an average of £750, and for 10% of those the extra cost passed five thousand pounds (Citizens Advice, home repair survey (Opinium), July 2026, 2026). The survey is UK-wide, and it measures what people paid to fix the work, the usual core of a damages claim against the builder; the typical dispute therefore sits in the lower half of the small claims range.
Court fees are the other sunk cost, and unlike most of the expert's bill they are recoverable from the loser. The issue fee climbs from £35 on the smallest claims to £455 in the top small claims band (HMCTS civil court fees, EX50, 2026), and the hearing fee from £27 to £346. An application on notice for late permission to rely on expert evidence costs £321. A claimant in the top band who buys a report at the civil average rate will spend more on court and expert than the cap could return, so the decision to instruct rests on whether the report settles the dispute early. The site's guide on how to instruct an expert witness surveyor covers how to keep that instruction proportionate.
4 What Changes Above £10,000? Fast Track Band 4 and Fixed Costs
Once a building claim exceeds £10,000 it moves to the fast track, which runs to £25,000, or the intermediate track up to £100,000(Civil Procedure Rules, Part 26, 2026). The fast track complexity table places property and building disputes in band four, the highest band, and the fixed costs rules let the court allow any disbursement reasonably incurred, which is how an expert's report fee becomes recoverable (Civil Procedure Rules, Part 45 (fixed costs), 2026).
| RULE OR FIGURE | VALUE | SOURCE |
|---|---|---|
| Fast track ceiling (CPR 26.9(5)) | £25,000 | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 26 |
| Intermediate track ceiling (CPR 26.9(7)) | £100,000 | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 26 |
| Fast track oral expert evidence (CPR 26.9(6)) | one expert per party | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 26 |
| Fast track complexity band for building claims (CPR 26.15 Table 1, band 4) | property and building disputes | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 26 |
| Fast track fixed costs, band 4, settled pre-issue, claim over £10,000 (Table 12, stage A) | £2,684 | CPR Practice Direction 45, Table 12 |
| Fast track fixed costs, band 4, claim settled after issue but before allocation (Table 12, stage B1) | £3,097 | CPR Practice Direction 45, Table 12 |
| Fast track fixed costs, band 4, claim settled after listing but before trial (PD 45 Table 12, stage B3) | £8,155 | CPR Practice Direction 45, Table 12 |
| Fast track fixed costs, band 3, settled after listing but before trial (Table 12, stage B3) | £5,265 | CPR Practice Direction 45, Table 12 |
| Fast track trial advocacy fee, band 4, claim £10,000.01 to £15,000 (Table 12, stage D) | £2,168 | CPR Practice Direction 45, Table 12 |
| Fast track trial advocacy fee, band 4, claim over £15,000 (Table 12, stage D) | £2,994 | CPR Practice Direction 45, Table 12 |
| Disbursements recoverable on the fast track outside the protocols (CPR 45.59(b)) | reasonably incurred | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 45 (fixed costs) |
| Expert attendance fee on the fast track (CPR 45.59(a)) | attending the trial | Civil Procedure Rules, Part 45 (fixed costs) |
| Fast track hearing fee | £619 | HMCTS civil court fees, EX50 |
The small claims track takes claims up to £10,000; the fast track takes monetary claims up to £25,000; the intermediate track runs to £100,000(Civil Procedure Rules, Part 26, 2026). The fast track's allocation table names property and building disputes in band four, the most generous fixed-costs band, alongside professional negligence (Civil Procedure Rules, Part 26, 2026). For a building claim that means £8,155 plus a percentage of damages for a claim settling after listing, against £5,265 in band three, and a trial advocacy fee of £2,168 or £2,994 by value (CPR Practice Direction 45, Table 12, 2024).
The expert's fee sits outside those tables as a disbursement. On the fast track the court may allow any disbursement reasonably incurred, other than one covering work the fixed costs already pay for, and the expert's fee for attending the trial is allowed where the court gave permission for attendance (Civil Procedure Rules, Part 45 (fixed costs), 2026). Two controls remain. The permission application must carry an estimate of the costs of the expert evidence, and the court may limit the amount of a party's expert fees that may be recovered from the other side (Civil Procedure Rules, Part 35, 2026). So a report in a building defects claim above the small claims ceiling is recoverable in principle if the claim succeeds and the fee was proportionate; below it, recovery stops at £750. The guide to what to expect from a property expert witness report explains the longer form a fast track report takes.
5 How Many Builder Claims Reach a Judge, and How Long Does It Take? 8,900 Small Claims Trials a Quarter
County courts in England and Wales received 571,000 claims in April to June 2026, of which 82,000 (14%) were defended; 12,000 trials were held, 8,900 of them small claims trials, and the median small claim took 41.0 weeks from issue to trial (MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026, 2026). Of 368,000 judgments, 94% were entered by default.
| MEASURE (APRIL TO JUNE 2026) | VALUE | SOURCE |
|---|---|---|
| County court claims issued, April to June 2026 | 571,000 | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Money and damages claims as a share of all claims | 91% | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Claims defended, April to June 2026 | 82,000 | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Claims defended as a share of claims issued | 14% | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Money and damages claims allocated to a track, April to June 2026 | 32,000 | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Allocated to the small claims track | 21,000 | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Allocated to the fast track | 8,300 | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Allocated to the intermediate track | 770 | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Allocated to the multi-track | 1,600 | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Trials, April to June 2026 | 12,000 | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Small claims trials, April to June 2026 | 8,900 | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Fast, intermediate and multi-track trials, April to June 2026 | 3,000 | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Median time from issue to trial, small claims | 41.0 weeks | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Median time from issue to trial, fast, intermediate and multi-track | 55.9 weeks | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Judgments, April to June 2026 | 368,000 | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
| Share of judgments that were default judgments | 94% | MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026 |
The Ministry of Justice does not count claims by cause of action; it publishes the funnel every money claim passes through, which is narrow. Of 571,000 claims issued in the quarter, 91% were money and damages claims and only 14% were defended (MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026, 2026). Of 32,000 claims allocated to a track, 21,000 went to the small claims track and 8,300 to the fast track (MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026, 2026). The quarter produced 12,000 trials, 8,900 of them small claims trials (MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026, 2026). The hearing a report is bought for is the rarest outcome: a builder who has stopped answering is more likely to let judgment go by default than to argue the workmanship.
Time matters too, because evidence decays while the claim waits. The median small claim issued in the period took 41.0 weeks to reach trial, 55.9 weeks on the fast, intermediate and multi-tracks (MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026, 2026). A report commissioned before the letter before claim therefore reaches the judge the best part of a year later, when the works may have been covered over or repaired. That is the strongest argument for inspecting before remedial work starts, as the guide to housing disrepair expert witness reports notes for tenants. The pre-action practice direction expects a response to a letter before claim within 14 days in a straightforward case and 3 months in a very complex one, and calls litigation a last resort(CPR Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct, 2026).
6 Does the Court Want Your Report, or Does It Want You to Mediate First? Only 26.6% of Small Claims Settled at Mediation
Since 22 May 2024, defended money claims up to £10,000 are referred to a free telephone mediation appointment of up to one hour before any hearing, and a party who does not attend can be struck out or ordered to pay costs even if they win (GOV.UK guidance: Small Claims Mediation Service, 2024). In July 2026 HM Courts and Tribunals Service held 10,001 small claims mediations and 2,663 settled, 26.6%(HMCTS management information, July 2026, 2026).
| MEASURE | VALUE | SOURCE |
|---|---|---|
| Date compulsory mediation began for defended money claims of £10,000 or less | 22 May 2024 | MoJ/HMCTS press release, 22 May 2024 |
| Length of the compulsory mediation appointment | up to one hour | GOV.UK guidance: Small Claims Mediation Service |
| Sanction for not attending or not making an effort at mediation | struck out | GOV.UK guidance: Small Claims Mediation Service |
| Small money claims that progressed through the county courts in 2022 | 85,000 | MoJ/HMCTS press release, 22 May 2024 |
| Of those, claims whose parties opted into voluntary mediation in 2022 | 20,000 | MoJ/HMCTS press release, 22 May 2024 |
| Judicial sitting days the government expected compulsory mediation to free up each year | 5,000 | MoJ/HMCTS press release, 22 May 2024 |
| Small claims mediation appointments held, July 2025 | 5,339 | HMCTS management information, July 2026 |
| Small claims referred to mediation, March 2026 | 12,343 | HMCTS management information, July 2026 |
| Small claims referred to mediation, July 2026 | 11,144 | HMCTS management information, July 2026 |
| Small claims mediation appointments held, July 2026 | 10,001 | HMCTS management information, July 2026 |
| Small claims settled at mediation, July 2026 | 2,663 | HMCTS management information, July 2026 |
| Share of small claims settled at mediation, July 2026 | 26.6% | HMCTS management information, July 2026 |
| Share settled at mediation, December 2025 (highest month in the year) | 32.2% | HMCTS management information, July 2026 |
| Share settled at mediation, April 2026 (lowest month in the year) | 24.4% | HMCTS management information, July 2026 |
Before a district judge decides whether to admit a report, the parties to a defended claim under the small claims ceiling are sent to the Small Claims Mediation Service: a free telephone appointment of up to one hour at which a verbal agreement is binding (GOV.UK guidance: Small Claims Mediation Service, 2024). Announcing the change on 22 May 2024, the government noted that of about 85,000 small money claims in the county courts in 2022, parties in 20,000 opted into mediation and more than half of those settled (MoJ/HMCTS press release, 22 May 2024, 2022). Volume followed: 5,339 appointments were held in July 2025 and 10,001 in July 2026, with referrals peaking at 12,343 in March 2026 (HMCTS management information, July 2026, 2026).
The settlement share has moved the other way. In the twelve months to July 2026 it ran between 32.2% in December 2025 and 24.4% in April 2026, and stood at 26.6% in July 2026 (HMCTS management information, July 2026, 2026): roughly one appointment in four now ends in a deal, against more than half when attendance was voluntary. The reader is the builder or the builder's insurer on a one-hour call, and a short report that costs the remedial work against a named standard is the lever that moves it, as the guide to using an expert witness surveyor in mediation describes. For the three in four claims that do not settle, the report then needs the court's permission before it counts at all, and recovery of its cost stops at £750.
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Methodology
Every figure on this page was read on the cited page on the research date. Every source URL was fetched and checked by the automated verification script on the second of October 2026: all hosts were reachable and each figure was located in the page text, except that figures held inside PDF documents, which the script cannot read, were confirmed by extracting the PDF text and locating the exact value; a small number of hosts that block automated requests were confirmed by opening the page directly. That check is recorded against every fact in the fact sheet. The recency sweep ran at full strength on Reddit, TikTok and the open web; its YouTube leg was marked unreliable by the sweep's own relevance guard for one of the four queries and is treated as degraded. The angle pass and the fact sheet ran without degradation; the hero image was rendered by an image model from a text-free composition brief, while the statistics card and the comparison chart were drawn locally from the fact sheet so that every number on them is the fact sheet's own. Rule text comes from the Civil Procedure Rules and Practice Directions as published by the Ministry of Justice; court fees from the EX50 schedule updated in July 2026; court volumes and timescales from the Civil Justice Statistics Quarterly for April to June 2026; mediation volumes and settlement shares from the HMCTS management information release of September 2026, which is management information rather than accredited statistics; expert hourly rates from the Bond Solon survey of 2025, which covers all expert disciplines and is not surveyor-specific; legal aid expert rates from the 2013 remuneration regulations as currently in force; the costs-neutrality principle from the Court of Appeal's judgment of July 2026 in Orton v Barclays Bank; and homeowner loss figures from Citizens Advice's July 2026 release of an Opinium survey, which is UK-wide. No public source records how often an expert report fee is actually recovered in a small claims builder dispute, or the fee typically paid for such a report, and the page does not estimate either; the figures from this site's own fee pages are not used.
- Sources consulted: 29
- Sources cited: 17
- Data freshness: current year: 81, last year: 16, older: 19
- Data range: 2013-12-02 to 2026-10-02
- Research date: 2026-10-02
- Update schedule: Quarterly, after each Civil Justice Statistics and HMCTS management information release
- Limitations: No court or government body publishes how often the cost of an expert report is recovered in a small claims builder dispute, or the fee actually paid for such reports; this page therefore sets the rules and the court's own figures side by side rather than reporting a recovery rate. The Bond Solon hourly rates cover all expert disciplines, 71% of them medical, and are not surveyor-specific; the legal aid surveyor rates date from 2013. The HMCTS mediation series is management information, not accredited official statistics, and covers all small claims, not building disputes alone. The Citizens Advice survey is UK-wide. Fast track fixed costs are quoted from the Practice Direction 45 page dated 28 March 2024.
Sources & References
- CPR Practice Direction 27A (small claims track). "Practice Direction 27A – Small Claims Track." justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part27/pd_part27. Accessed 2026-10-02.
- Civil Procedure Rules, Part 27. "Part 27 – The Small Claims Track." justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part27. Accessed 2026-10-02.
- Civil Procedure Rules, Part 26. "Part 26 – Case Management – Preliminary Stage." justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part26. Accessed 2026-10-02.
- Civil Procedure Rules, Part 35. "Part 35 – Experts and Assessors." justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part35. Accessed 2026-10-02.
- Civil Procedure Rules, Part 45 (fixed costs). "Part 45 – Fixed Costs." justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part45-fixed-costs. Accessed 2026-10-02.
- CPR Practice Direction 45, Table 12. "Practice Direction 45 – Fixed Costs (Table 12: amount of fixed costs in the fast track)." justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part45-fixed-costs/practice-di. Accessed 2026-10-02.
- CPR Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct. "Practice Direction – Pre-Action Conduct and Protocols." justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/pd_pre-action_conduct. Accessed 2026-10-02.
- HMCTS civil court fees, EX50. "Civil court fees (EX50)." gov.uk/government/publications/fees-in-the-civil-and-family-courts-main-fees-ex5. Accessed 2026-10-02.
- MoJ Civil Justice Statistics, April to June 2026. "Civil Justice Statistics Quarterly: April to June 2026." gov.uk/government/statistics/civil-justice-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-20. Accessed 2026-10-02.
- HMCTS management information, July 2026. "HMCTS management information – July 2026 (accessible CSV, civil courts and tribunals July 2025 to July 2026)." assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6aa137b362ec7fe7bedf520c/HMCTS_MI_output_. Accessed 2026-10-02.
- MoJ/HMCTS press release, 22 May 2024. "Faster resolution for small claims as mediation baked into courts process." gov.uk/government/news/faster-resolution-for-small-claims-as-mediation-baked-int. Accessed 2026-10-02.
- GOV.UK guidance: Small Claims Mediation Service. "Small Claims Mediation Service." gov.uk/guidance/small-claims-mediation-service. Accessed 2026-10-02.
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