The Short Point
The Senior Courts Costs Office has no jurisdiction to order security for the costs of a detailed assessment under CPR 25. But the reasoning matters more than the refusal, because it points at a mechanism receiving parties routinely fail to use.
Ziyavudin Magomedov & Ors v Mikhail Rabinovich & Ors [2026] EWHC 962 (SCCO), Costs Judge Brown, 24 April 2026.
Why CPR 25 Does Not Reach Detailed Assessment
Two reasons, and the second is the more interesting.
The first is structural. Detailed assessment proceedings “have their own particular procedure”, with “no express importation of CPR 25”. CPR 47 is a self-contained code, and the only interim measure it provides for is the power to issue an interim certificate.
The second is about who the parties actually are. Security for costs runs against a claimant, not a defendant, because a defendant is compelled to litigate or submit to the claim rather than choosing to bring it. A receiving party pursuing its costs is not in the position of a defendant to that claim, and the court cannot award security against one.
What Is Available Instead: CPR 47.16
The court identified the mechanism that does exist within the regime. Under CPR 47.16 the court may, at any time after the receiving party has filed a request for a detailed assessment hearing, issue an interim costs certificate for such sum as it considers appropriate.
That is the part worth taking away, and it is the opposite of the headline. A decision refusing security to a paying party is simultaneously a reminder that the receiving party has a route to money before the assessment concludes — and most firms never ask.
Why Firms Do Not Use It, and Why They Should
Detailed assessment is slow. A bill served this year may not be assessed for many months, and the receiving firm carries the disbursements and the work in the meantime. The instinct is to wait for the final certificate because that is when the number becomes certain.
The interim certificate exists precisely so that certainty is not the price of getting paid. The trigger is filing the request for a detailed assessment hearing, which on most files happens a long way before the hearing itself.
It sits alongside the other route to money before the end — a payment on account, where the court forms a provisional view of what will survive assessment. How that figure is arrived at, and why there is no standard percentage, is dealt with in Cubic v TfL. The two are different mechanisms at different stages, with the same commercial purpose.
What to Do With It
- File the request for a detailed assessment hearing promptly — it is the trigger for the interim certificate as well as a deadline in its own right.
- Consider asking for an interim certificate rather than waiting for the final one.
- Do not assume the ordinary interim remedies apply to an assessment. CPR 47 is its own regime, and this is not the only place that matters.
- If you act for a paying party concerned about recovering its own costs of the assessment, CPR 25 in the SCCO is not the answer.
How DMD Costs Can Help
We prepare and negotiate claimant costs for solicitor firms, including the request for a detailed assessment hearing and the material behind an interim application. The stage-by-stage recovery checklist sets out where each of these steps falls.
Send us the file and we will confirm the fixed fee before any work begins.
A Note on Sources
Citation, court, judge, date and the quoted reasoning were taken from the approved judgment.