Thanks to some shoddy rule drafting it would be easy to conclude that when serving an electronic bill of costs ("E-Bill") on the paying party, a copy should also be filed at Court.
It should not.
The confusion arises because of the wording of paragraphs 5.A4 and 5.1A of PD47 which state (emphasis added):
‘5.A4 Where a bill of costs otherwise falls within paragraph 5.1(a) but work was done both before and after the Transition Date, a party may serve and file either a paper bill or an electronic bill in respect of work done before that date and must serve and file an electronic bill in respect of work done after that date.”.
5.1A Whenever electronic bills are served or filed at the court, they must also be served or filed in hard copy, in a manageable paper format as shown in the pdf version of Precedent S. A copy of the full electronic spreadsheet version must at the same time be provided to the paying party and filed at the court by e-mail or other electronic means.’
At first glance this would appear to suggest that when serving the Bill upon the Defendant a copy must also be filed at Court. However, the rules which govern the commencement of detailed assessment proceedings make no mention of filing any Bill of Costs (paper or electronic) at Court.
CPR 47.6(1) and the supporting Practice Direction at [5.2] have not been amended and still provide that detailed assessment proceedings are commenced by serving the relevant documents "on the paying party". There is no requirement to file copies at Court when serving a Bill.
When read in context, the first sentence in paragraph 5.1A simply provides that when an E-Bill is served Solicitors must serve both a hard copy of the Bill and an electronic copy. And when an E-Bill is filed at Court [when requesting a detailed assessment hearing] Solicitors must file both a hard copy and an electronic copy. The second sentence merely specifies the means (i.e. via email) by which the spreadsheet version must be served or filed.
Thus an E-Bill, like the Paper Bill, should only be filed at Court when a detailed/provisional assessment hearing is requested.