Scottish Court Expenses Unit Rises to £22.10 in 2026

If you have never read a Scottish statutory instrument before, this one looks more intimidating than it really is. Still, one figure jumps off the page. According to the Scottish Statutory Instrument published on legislation.gov.uk, the value of the court expenses unit will rise from £18.00 to £22.10 on 10 October 2026. The rule was made on 18 August 2026 and laid before the Scottish Parliament on 20 August 2026. It applies across the Court of Session, the Sheriff Appeal Court and the Sheriff Court, so this is not a tiny technical tweak for one corner of the system. It is a Scotland-wide update to how some legal costs are worked out in civil cases.

To understand why that matters, we need to translate the legal language. In Scottish civil courts, judicial expenses are the costs one side may be ordered to pay to the other. And taxation here does not mean tax in the HMRC sense. It means the checking and assessment of a legal account to decide what can properly be recovered. **What this means in plain English:** when a fee is calculated by reference to units, a higher unit usually means a higher recoverable charge. The move from £18.00 to £22.10 is an increase of £4.10, or about 22.8 per cent, so this is a meaningful rise rather than a cosmetic one.

The date matters just as much as the amount. The instrument says the new £22.10 unit has no effect on fees payable for work carried out before 10 October 2026. So if a case runs across that date, earlier work stays on the old rate and only later work can be charged by reference to the new one. That transition rule is important because it stops the increase being backdated. If you are reading a court account, or trying to estimate what an award of expenses might look like, you need to ask not only what work was done but when it was done.

The instrument also tidies up rule 3.7 on simple procedure. The heading changes to ‘reduction of charges’, the text is rewritten so it clearly applies where expenses are taxed or assessed by reference to the table of charges in schedule 5, and a short phrase is removed from sub-paragraph (3) to clean up the wording. This matters because simple procedure is meant to be the more accessible route for smaller civil disputes. The amendment does not look like a dramatic new costs policy. It looks more like a clarification, helping readers see exactly what rule 3.7 is about and when it applies.

A second clarification appears in rule 4.2. The 2026 instrument inserts the words ‘including court fees’ after ‘outlays’. That may look minor, but it answers a practical question. Outlays are the separate payments made in the course of a case, and the rule now says plainly that court fees sit inside that category. **Why that matters:** when a court checks what can be allowed as an outlay, the text now makes court fees explicit rather than leaving readers to infer it. For anyone trying to follow a bill of expenses, that is useful and more transparent.

There is also a small civics lesson here about how Scottish court rules are made. The source text says the Scottish Civil Justice Council prepared draft rules, the Court of Session approved them, and the Court of Session then made this Act of Sederunt under powers in earlier legislation, including the Acts named in the instrument. It was signed by Lord President Paul Cullen in Edinburgh on 18 August 2026. If you see the phrase Act of Sederunt, think of the civil court rulebook being updated by the court itself. The instrument also says a certified copy is to be inserted in the Books of Sederunt, which is the formal record where these rules are kept.

So what should you take away from all this? First, from 10 October 2026, some recoverable legal charges in Scottish civil cases will be priced using a higher unit of £22.10 rather than £18.00. Second, the increase applies only to work done on or after that date. Third, the rules now say more clearly that court fees are allowable outlays and that rule 3.7 in simple procedure is about reduction of charges. For solicitors, advice workers, litigants in person and anyone trying to understand a court account, those are the points that matter most. The explanatory note on legislation.gov.uk, which is not part of the law itself, presents this as a focused amendment to the 2019 rules rather than a full rewrite of the expenses system: higher units, clearer wording and a firmer statement that court fees count as outlays.