Civil Procedure Rules

Civil Procedure Rules 1998

Statutory Instrument
Citation	SI 1998/3132 (L. 17)
Territorial extent	United Kingdom
Dates
Made	10 December 1998
Laid before Parliament	17 December 1998
Commencement	24 April 1999 (1999-04-24)
Status: Amended
Text of statute as originally enacted
Text of the Civil Procedure Rules as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk.

The Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) were introduced in 1997 as per the Civil Procedure Act 1997^[1] by the Civil Procedure Rule Committee and are the rules of civil procedure used by the Court of Appeal, High Court of Justice, and County Courts in civil cases in England and Wales. They apply to all cases commenced after 26 April 1999, and largely replace the Rules of the Supreme Court and the County Court Rules. The Civil Procedure Rules 1998 is the statutory instrument listing the rules.^[2]

The CPR were designed to improve access to justice by making legal proceedings cheaper, quicker, and easier to understand for non-lawyers. As a consequence of this, many former, older legal terms were replaced with ‘plain English’ equivalents, such as "claimant" for "plaintiff" and "witness summons" for "subpoena".

Unlike the previous rules of civil procedure, the CPR commence with a statement of their "overriding objective", both to aid in the application of specific provisions and to guide behaviour where no specific rule applies.