Part 36 Offer — Costs Consequences

Works out what follows from an unaccepted or late-accepted Part 36 offer under CPR Part 36 (England and Wales): the additional amount, enhanced interest, and interest on costs. Everything runs in your browser — no figure you type is sent anywhere or stored.

Before you start

Part 36 does not bite in every case, and the fixed-costs rules changed on 1 October 2023. Answer these and the calculator will tell you which regime applies.

Part 36 does not apply to small claims (CPR 27.2(1)(g)).

The offer itself

The first day of trial is the first day the parties are required to attend court; judicial pre-reading days do not count (Mate v Mate [2023] EWHC 806 (Ch); Gagliardi v Evolution Capital Management LLC [2025] EWHC 3488 (Comm)).

Judgment against the defendant is at least as advantageous to the claimant as the proposals in the claimant’s own Part 36 offer. The court must make the orders in r.36.17(4) unless it considers it unjust to do so.

Where there is no monetary award, the additional amount is a percentage of the costs awarded to the claimant: r.36.17(4)(d)(ii).
Enhanced interest is not awarded on damages that would not ordinarily carry interest — future pecuniary loss and future expenditure in particular (Pankhurst v White [2010] EWCA Civ 1445; McPhilemy v The Times Newspapers Ltd (No.2) [2001] EWCA Civ 933). The court may also award interest on only part of the sum, for only part of the period.
Contractual interest, or interest under s.35A Senior Courts Act 1981 or s.69 County Courts Act 1984. This is added to the award for the additional amount, but not for enhanced interest — see the note under the result.

The period

Work out the relevant period

An offer is made when it is served, not when it is received (r.36.7(2)); use the date of deemed service under CPR 6.26.

Rate

The built-in history splits the period at each Bank Rate change, so a period spanning a change is not averaged away.
The maximum is 10% above base. There is no default rule in favour of the maximum (BXB v Watch Tower and Bible Tract Society of Pennsylvania [2020] EWHC 656 (QB)); the award must be proportionate to the time that elapsed, the reasonableness of the defence, and the disruption caused (OMV Petrom SA v Glencore International AG [2017] EWCA Civ 195).

Costs

Costs from expiry of the relevant period are on the indemnity basis (r.36.17(4)(b)) and are for assessment. If you have a figure, the interest on them can be estimated.

r.36.17(4)(c) allows up to 10% above base. The conventional figure is 4% above base (McPhilemy); 10% is for a bad case (OMV Petrom).

The additional amount

“Unless it considers it unjust to do so”

Every consequence above is subject to this. In considering whether it would be unjust, the court must take into account all the circumstances, including the five matters in r.36.17(5):

The burden is on the party resisting the usual order and it is a formidable one (Smith v Trafford Housing Trust, approved in Webb v Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust [2016] EWCA Civ 365). The court may find it unjust to make some but not all of the r.36.17(4) orders, though it would be unusual (JLE v Warrington & Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust [2019] EWHC 1582 (QB)).

Summary for the file

A plain-text record of the inputs, the working and the caveats. Select all and copy.

A calculation aid, not legal advice. It does not create a solicitor–client relationship, and no reliance should be placed on it without advice on your own case. Every figure is a draft for review by a qualified solicitor or barrister.

Each consequence applies only unless the court considers it unjust (rr.36.13(5), 36.17(3), 36.17(4)). Enhanced interest is shown as simple interest pro-rated on a 365-day year; the rate is a matter for the court’s discretion. The additional amount under r.36.17(4)(d) is 10% of the first £500,000 and 5% of any excess, capped at £75,000 — thresholds set by s.55 Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and the Offers to Settle in Civil Proceedings Order 2013 (SI 2013/93), and not index-linked.

Scope. This assumes a single claimant and a single defendant at first instance, with unrestricted recovery of costs. It does not cover periodical payments (r.36.18), provisional damages (r.36.19), deductible benefits (r.36.20), costs limited to court fees (r.36.21), Protocol offers in RTA and EL/PL claims (rr.36.25–36.31), counterclaims and Part 20 parties, or offers made in appeal proceedings (r.36.4).

Privacy. Nothing you enter leaves this page — there is no server, no database and no storage. The only third-party request the page makes is a cookieless page-view beacon to Cloudflare Web Analytics, which never sees your figures.

Written with AI. This tool was written with the assistance of AI (Anthropic’s Claude) and then checked against the rule text and the judgments cited. AI-drafted material can be wrong, incomplete or out of date, and can be confidently mistaken; nothing here has been settled by counsel or tested in court. Every figure is a draft for review by a qualified solicitor or barrister before it is relied on.

Author. Written and published by Serhan Handani in a personal capacity. It is not the work of, and does not represent the views of, any firm. For contact details, or to report an error in the rules or the arithmetic, see handani.dev.

Source and copyright. The rules applied are the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (SI 1998/3132) as revised, read from legislation.gov.uk. The Civil Procedure Rules are Crown copyright, and this page contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The rules are paraphrased here rather than reproduced, no practitioner commentary is quoted, and cases are named only where a judgment determines a figure the page uses.

Version · CPR Part 36 checked as at , against the revised Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (SI 1998/3132) current to · Bank Rate data verified as at .