History of the National Taxing Team

by Marysia Quinn

Before the NTT

Before the Taxing Teams were established all determinations were done by court clerks as part of their in-court duties and formed a significant area of Crown Court work.  Trials were generally speaking, much shorter in duration and a long firm fraud rarely lasted more than four or five weeks.  Graduated Fees had not been invented and the choice, for both solicitors and counsel acting under legal aid, lay between Standard Fees and Ex Post Facto.  Individual courts dealt with quality control and payment of the taxed amounts.  In addition, the Circuit Taxing Co-ordinator and his/her assistant carried out quality control of taxations. They were also responsible for dissemination of technical information, such as changes to the Regulations, guidance from Headquarters (through Directions for Determining Officers), and significant Masters' decisions.  They also conducted audits of the courts in their circuit, set limits for the value of claims appropriated to EO or HEO court clerks, and appointed Nominated Officers, who had many years of experience as court clerk/determining officers and were deemed able to tax without limit of monetary value.  The Co-ordinator generally formed a link between Circuit management and LCD headquarters (as it then was) to ensure consistency in the application of taxing principles and practice and in the training of future determining officers.

In the late 1980s trials started to lengthen, due in part to increased legislation and in part to an increase in the offence of fraud; VAT was an early fruitful area of fraud.  The longer trials resulted in greater claims for costs from both solicitors and counsel.  It was becoming increasingly difficult to tax these larger claims in conjunction with court clerk duties since the clerk could not accommodate the large amount of paperwork, or devote unbroken consideration to the papers whilst sitting in court. The nature and size of the claims also threw up new areas, which required guidance to ensure consistency of approach to these new areas.  It was also necessary to ensure that only experienced and able determining officers taxed these very large claims.  This new style of large and complex frauds and the extremely large claims for costs to which they gave rise was perhaps typified by the Guinness sequence of trials.  It will be recalled that this was one of the first examples of criminal charges arising out of attempts by reputable commercial and financial institutions to manipulate share prices for the purpose of securing a favourable a take-over position.

1991 - The Central Taxing Teams are Established

It was to deal with taxation of these large claims that the NTT was set up in March 1991.  It was called the Central Taxing Team in those days.  Each circuit had its own Team whose members were drawn from the most experienced determining officers in the Crown Courts.  The largest Team was that of the South East Circuit based initially at the Central Criminal Court, whose director also took the lead at the regular meetings held with other regional directors.  Those meetings also included relevant staff in LCD Headquarters, such as legal aid division.  In addition annual conferences included attendance by those also significantly involved in the costs process, such as barristers, solicitors and Taxing Masters (as they were then called).  The Teams were also responsible for running training courses for those determining officers left at the Courts and this formed a large part of the work in the early years.  The basic courses lasted a week for either solicitor or counsel claims, and there were shorter courses for redetermination and written reasons.  In addition courses for assessment of Central Funds claims were also run.

A major benefit in having a discrete unit was that the determining officers could discuss such things as new aspects of defence preparation which these large frauds increasingly generated, the reasonableness of such work, and other technical and practical matters to ensure consistent and cogent decisions.  In addition, what was called the Large Fees Committee was set up to consider the proposed fees in really large cases.  This committee consisted of the director for each circuit, to whom details of the case and fees claimed were circulated.  The determining officer had to prepare this information and also make a presentation to the Committee, which in essence explained what fees he/she proposed to pay and why.  Records of such fees were kept to form a database of types of cases and fees paid.  In any case where the Fees Committee had been involved in the determination, they also had to be involved in the redetermination.

The original Teams were quite small, for instance the London region consisted of the director, two administrative staff and about seven determining officers.  Each claim received was entered by hand into a large ledger.  The problems of incorrect numbers, or linked and joined cases caused as many problems then as they still do today.  The housing and moving the increasingly large volumes of papers, which accompanied these claims, was also a problem.  The London team moved to more spacious offices in Orange Street, just behind the National Gallery.

It became apparent that the staff resources and the systems were adequate to cope with the vast amount of claims that then began to be generated by more and more large trials.

A backlog of determinations began to accumulate, which caused practitioners to suffer severe cash flow problems.  The remedy for this problem was the introduction of the interim payment, a hitherto unknown concept.  The system was so popular that consideration and payment of interim payments threatened to take over from determinations as the primary work of the Teams.  Again, the systems used were purely manual and it was time consuming to search the many sheets of the manual register to ensure that all interim payments were offset against determination.  There was always the problem of interim payments failing to be deducted due either to human error or because of incorrect indictment numbers and or defendant names.

To cure these operational problems, it was decided that a computer system should replace manual records.  In the early days this was largely put together by one or two determining officers who had an interest in computers, making use of some simple software which the Department already had.  Whilst those determining officers did a tremendous amount of work, it was clear that the sheer amount of public funds now being handled by CTT either as interim payments or determinations required a more refined and reliable accounting system than the one that had been allocated to the Team.  After several years of developmental work the current POLAR system came about.

The introduction of new methods of assessing and paying for criminal costs, such as Graduated Fees and more recently the Legal Services Commission High Cost Cases contracted cases, have, in theory have reduced the work of the NTT.  In addition, the proposed Graduated Fee system for solicitors will remove the remaining bulk of the NTT work, leaving only central funds, inter parties and tail end work only to be taxed.  However, the Unit is always looking for other areas in which its expertise can be utilised and advising the CPS on fees, providing assistance on secondment to the High Costs Case Unit at the LSC and assisting with Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) claims are examples.