BL-2023-BRS-000024 - [2025] EWHC 2898 (Ch)

This claim was tried by me on 30 September 2025 and 1 October 2025. At the end of the trial, I gave judgment ex tempore dismissing the claimants’ claim (see [2025] EWHC 2765 (Ch)). I also ordered the claimants to pay costs in respect of the first and second defendants’ representation pro bono by counsel and solicitors to the Access to Justice Foundation. These costs were to be summarily assessed on the standard basis if not agreed. They have not been agreed, and I must therefore assess them. For this purpose, I have had the benefit of a costs schedule for the first and second defendants’ costs, and written submissions from both sides. This written ruling contains my assessment. Although the first and second defendants’ trustees in bankruptcy were technically also defendants to this claim, they played no part in the trial. So, when I refer hereafter to “the defendants”, I am referring to the first and second defendants alone.

The claim itself was begun by claim form issued on 27 June 2023. It alleged a partnership, or at least a joint venture agreement, between the parties in relation to the redevelopment of a former hotel (owned by the first and second defendants) in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, into four townhouses, to be sold at a profit. The claimants claimed a one third share of the profit. I held that there was neither a partnership nor a joint venture agreement between the parties, and that the claimants’ only entitlement was to be paid £825,000 in accordance with a JCT contract under which the claimants were the building contractor. The claimants’ own valuation of the development was up to £3.2 million. In fact, the four townhouses realised a total of £2,540,000. Although £438,000 was transferred to the defendants by their solicitors after the sales had completed, the defendants say that these funds were used to pay other debts, and that, in fact, there were no profits of the redevelopment. But I am not concerned with that issue now.