Compulsory Mediation: A Sign Of Things To Come

In July this year, the Ministry of Justice announced that mediation will soon be compulsory for money claims worth up to £10,000. The change, which follows a year-long consultation on increasing the use of mediation in the civil justice system, is the clearest sign yet of a decisive shift in approaches to mediation: from encouragement to compulsion.

In this blog post, we look at how the new compulsory mediation scheme will work, and what this change can tell us about the future trajectory of the role of mediation in litigation.

How the new scheme will work

The key features of the scheme are straightforward.

• The government proposes to make mediation an integrated, essential step in the litigation process for all small claims in the County Court ("small" claims are generally those worth under £10,000) issued under Part 7 of the Civil Procedure Rules. There are no exemptions – either for specific categories of claim, or on an individual basis.