Medical evidence in small claims injury cases: CPR Part 27, the £750 cap, and fixed cost medical reports

For PI fee-earners · ~5 min read · quotes from CPR Part 27, PD 27A and PD 27B

No expert evidence without permission

The starting point is CPR rule 27.5, and it could not be shorter:

"No expert may give evidence, whether written or oral, at a hearing without the permission of the court."

CPR Part 27, rule 27.5

Practice Direction 27A repeats the point for written reports specifically:

"No party may rely at the hearing on any report from an expert unless express permission has been granted by the court beforehand."

Practice Direction 27A, paragraph 5.1

A medical report commissioned without thinking about permission is a report the court may simply refuse to look at. Where the court does allow expert evidence, its standard directions draw attention to the fee limit below — and typically favour a single expert rather than one per party.

The £750 cap on expert fees

CPR rule 27.14(2)(f) allows recovery of "a sum not exceeding the amount specified in Practice Direction 27A for an expert's fees" — and PD 27A sets that amount:

"for experts' fees, a sum not exceeding £750 for each expert."

Practice Direction 27A, paragraph 7.3(2)

That is the whole budget, per expert, win or lose. A report that costs more than £750 to obtain leaves the difference with whoever commissioned it. On volume work, every pound spent preparing the evidence — including obtaining and organising the underlying records — comes out of a fixed envelope.

Whiplash claims: the fixed cost MedCo report

For RTA injury claims that fall under the small claims protocol (most road traffic injury claims valued under the £5,000 injury limit), Practice Direction 27B goes further. It applies, in its own words, to "claims where the parties have followed the Pre-Action Protocol for Personal Injury Claims below the Small Claims Limit in Road Traffic Accidents" — and it makes the medical report a gateway requirement:

"Where the claimant wishes to start proceedings under this Practice Direction to assess the value of the claim, they may not do so unless the medical report relied upon (or, if there is more than one report, the first report) is a fixed cost medical report from an accredited medical expert selected via MedCo"

Practice Direction 27B, paragraph 1.11(1)

A second report is not a given: under paragraph 1.12, permission "may only be given where the use of that report is justified" — for example where the first expert recommends it, or recovery diverges from the original prognosis.

The fixed figures

Paragraph 1.14 then fixes what those reports — and the records behind them — can cost:

• First fixed cost MedCo report: £226
• Further specialist reports (orthopaedic surgeon, A&E consultant, GP, physiotherapist): £226–£527
• Obtaining medical records: £38 plus the direct costs from the record holder, capped at £100 per set

That last line deserves more attention than it gets: the cost of obtaining the medical records is itself a fixed, capped, disclosable item — the same principle that applies higher up the value scale in the RTA Portal's Stage 2 Settlement Pack, where the actual invoice for the records must be produced.

What this means in practice

The small claims track is a fixed-cost environment from top to bottom: the expert is capped, the report is fixed, the records are capped. There is no hourly-rate slack anywhere in the chain. Time spent wrestling a disorganised record set into something an expert can use — or paying an agency by the hour to do it — is unrecoverable on these files. The economics only work when the records step is fast, predictable and cheap, which is exactly why we price per document rather than per hour.

Quotations are from CPR Part 27, Practice Direction 27A and Practice Direction 27B as published on justice.gov.uk; figures and rule text change — check the current text directly for any matter where precise compliance matters. General information for legal professionals, not legal advice.