Independent UK law firm Burges Salmon, in collaboration with litigation intelligence platform Solomonic, has released a comprehensive report examining public sector litigation trends in England and Wales over the past ten years.

Burges Salmon’s Public Sector Litigation team, alongside Solomonic’s advanced data analytics, explored key litigation patterns across central and local government, public services, regulators, and arms-length bodies. The findings illustrate the growing role of data in helping public institutions and their legal advisors make informed decisions when navigating disputes and litigation.

By combining Solomonic’s data-driven insights with Burges Salmon’s legal expertise, the report sheds light on evolving trends in legal disputes, offering valuable guidance for legal professionals, policymakers, and institutions involved in public litigation.

Key highlights from the report include:

1. Overall public sector High Court litigation has fallen steadily since 2014. This is largely due to a significant decrease in claims against central government. However, there has been an increase in claims brought by the public sector in the same period, largely driven by local authorities bringing an increasing volume of claims.
2. Public sector litigation appears to follow similar trends to other High Court litigation, indicating that the public sector is not immune from the legal risks and issues the private sector faces.
3. Court data reveals that the pandemic has (perhaps unsurprisingly) impacted how High Court litigation is playing out.  Public sector organisations are seeing an increase in other types of proceedings, such as judicial reviews.
4. Time to resolution has been increasing for both public sector litigation and other High Court litigation. In addition, the public sector shows different tendencies to settle compared to other parties, and also different patterns between public sector organisations.

Tom Whittaker, a director in Burges Salmon’s Dispute Resolution team, comments: “The analysis illustrates that litigation has continued to change for public sector organisations over the last ten years, with notable changes since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is difficult to say whether this is the new normal, especially as we expect factors such as greater adoption of technology and changes in legislation to impact the risks of future disputes for the public sector.

“Our analysis suggests that the experiences of the public sector in High Court litigation are in many ways consistent with that of other parties. However, on closer analysis, we can see that there are notable differences in some areas, including significant differences in how litigation plays out for different types of public sector organisations such as in how frequently they settle claims, and how likely they are to bring claims.”

Since 2021, Burges Salmon and Solomonic have successfully been working towards a transformative partnership that leverages litigation data and analytics to inform legal strategies. Ian Tucker, partner at Burges Salmon, adds: “We have been working with Solomonic for a number of years so that our clients can benefit from our legal expertise informed by court analysis. Solomonic provides us access to a level of data that helps us better understand the litigation our clients are facing and how the dynamics in a case may play out”.

 Edward Bird, Solomonic’s CEO, says: “This analysis complements the statistics published by the government, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the litigation workload faced by public sector organisations and to a level of granularity not seen previously. Combined with expert legal insight, this report reveals new and unforeseen insights and learnings.”

With a dedicated public sector team, Burges Salmon advises on the legal risks that public sector organisations need to navigate, including procurement challenges, judicial reviews, regulatory investigations, EU law compliance, competition law and complex litigation on behalf of central and local government, statutory regulators, hybrid public decision-making bodies as well as businesses and individuals dealing with the public sector. The team is known for its strategic thinking and practical approach to resolving disputes in public and administrative law, with an extensive track record in handling high-profile litigation.

Always thinking ahead, the firm works alongside clients to help them navigate changing business environments, identifying opportunities and seeking the best possible outcomes.