A new Practice Direction (PD5C) has been issued, providing guidance on the procedure for using the CE-File electronic filing and case management system in specified court proceedings.

The new Practice Direction:

• Comes into force 1 October 2025
• Supplements CPR rules 5.5 (filing and sending documents) and 7.12 (electronic issue of claims)

For the most part, the rules and guidance in the new Practice Direction are not new and will largely be familiar to commercial practitioners who have been using the CE-Filing system since its introduction in 2019. However, by way of brief summary of the headline points:

• Para 2.1 provides that in all ‘relevant courts’ (being those listed in Para 1.3) except the Administrative Court:
  • parties who are legally represented must use the CE-File to start or continue any proceedings and when corresponding with the court (unless provided otherwise in the Practice Direction); and
  • parties who are not legally represented may use the CE-File to start or continue any proceedings and when corresponding with the court.

(In the Administrative Court, the use of CE-File is optional for any party, whether legally represented or not; Para 2.2).

• Para 2.5 provides that in the event of downtime of the CE-File website or any other technical difficulty with the CE-File website so that a document cannot be submitted, the court will give directions on how to submit documents on the CE-File website.
• Para 3.1 provides a reminder of the format requirements for documents uploaded to CE-File. In summary, documents must:
  • consist of one copy only unless required by a court order, rule or practice direction;
  • be in PDF format (or in Excel format if appropriate) unless the court directs otherwise or the document is a draft order, in which case it must be in “Word” format;
  • not exceed 100 megabytes (and in the event it does exceed this maximum limit, the filing party should either divide it into parts or contact the relevant court for further instructions); and
  • be appropriately categorised or labelled on CE-File (and relevantly, confidential documents must be submitted using the process in CE-File for that purpose; Para 3.3).
• Para 3.2 provides a clear reminder that documents submitted using CE-File must not also be provided to the court by some other means (e.g. email), unless this is required by a rule or practice direction, court order, practice note or other direction of the court.
  • Note that one such rule appears in Para 4 – addressing “Urgent applications” – which must be filed in accordance with the Practice Direction, but the relevant court must also be notified by email or telephone of the application and the reason for urgency.
• Para 3.4 deals with the submission process, which will be familiar to practitioners. Of particular note, however, are:
  • Para 3.4(2), which provides that Court officers may contact parties prior to acceptance to “correct minor errors on the submission”.
  • Para 3.4(4), which provides that if a submission is rejected:
    • notice of the reasons for rejection will be given to the party on CE-File; and
    • if the document was a claim form, appeal notice, or other document requiring issuance, it will not have been issued, and any new submission must comply with the requirements of the practice direction (including in respect of fees and the date and time of filing).
• Para 5 deals with documents which have not been submitted by CE-File. It provides (broadly) that:
  • historic proceedings started in a relevant court without using CE-File will be continued using CE-File, and hard copy records retained by the Court will be digitised and then destroyed (unless the filing party makes arrangements for the return or collection of the documents);
  • documents which are not required to be submitted using CE-File and are sent by email will be uploaded to CE-File by court officers (except for hearing and trial bundles), and if any fee is required, the document will not be sealed until the fee is paid.
  • documents not submitted by CE-File will be sealed electronically once uploaded to CE-File, and the electronic seal will bear the date it was applied, although in most cases the court will also mark the date on which the document was received by the court.
• Para 6 deals with “Original documents” which are to be filed or lodged in a relevant court physically, rather than via CE-File, if required by order of the court or by provision of the CPR or Insolvency Rules 2016.
• Para 7 deals with service, and provides a reminder that when a document has been issued by a relevant court, the submitting party will receive a notification that the document is available on CE-File, and the requirement to effect service falls on the relevant party and not the court.
• Para 9 touches briefly on requests for inspection of documents on CE-File by non-parties pursuant to CPR rule 5.4C, and provides that where proceedings have been started or continued on CE-File, requests for copies of such documents may be made using the Public Access side of the CE-File. (In other cases, the request must be made to the relevant court).

In relation to this final point, we note that the issue of which documents on the “court record” are publicly available to non-parties under CPR rule 5.4C has recently been considered by the Transparency & Open Justice Board established by the Lady Chief Justice in April 2024, which is looking more broadly at the ‘open justice gap’ and focusing on four ‘Key Objectives’: ‘Open Courts’, ‘Open Reporting’, ‘Open Decisions’ and ‘Open Documents’.

In relation to the issue of ‘Open Documents’, a new Practice Direction and Guidance Note is anticipated to be published shortly, following which new rules will be piloted in the Commercial Court (including the London Circuit Commercial Court). Whilst full details of the new pilot will only become clear on publication, we understand that (in summary and subject to certain caveats and exceptions), the new pilot scheme will impose a new filing obligation on solicitors for litigating parties, requiring the timely filing or re-filing of specified documents on CE-File within a set period following their reference in open court, and that once filed, such documents will be available to non-parties on the Public Access side of the CE-File without the need for an application.