The Point of Dispute is familiar: “the Bill contains excessive telephone contact with the Claimant. Such calls are routine in nature and should be limited to six-minute units or disallowed.”
Sometimes that is right. Sometimes it misreads the rule it depends on.
PD 47 does not classify a call as routine because it happened by telephone. Paragraph 5.14 defines routine communications as those which, because of their simplicity, should not be regarded as letters or e-mails of substance or telephone calls which properly amount to an attendance.
So the rule itself contemplates telephone calls that are attendances. A thirty-second call confirming an inspection time and a twenty-four minute attendance explaining an expert report, taking instructions on continuing defects and advising on a Part 36 offer both happened by telephone. They are not the same costs item.
The questions are what the call was about, whether it properly amounted to an attendance, whether it was reasonably necessary, whether its length was reasonable, whether the right fee earner made it — and whether the file can prove any of that.
What PD 47 actually says
Three paragraphs, read together.
| Paragraph | What it provides |
|---|---|
| 5.13 | “Communications” means letters out, e-mails out and telephone calls. Non-routine communications appear chronologically; routine ones are dealt with together as a single item. |
| 5.14 | Routine communications are those which, because of their simplicity, should not be regarded as letters or e-mails of substance, or telephone calls which properly amount to an attendance. |
| 5.22 | Routine letters out, e-mails out and telephone calls will in general be allowed on a unit basis of six minutes each, calculated by reference to the appropriate hourly rate. |
Two categories, then — and the dividing line is simplicity, not the method of communication.
The same paragraphs govern letters and e-mails, and the written side has one provision with no telephone equivalent: paragraph 5.22(2) allows actual recorded time for electronic communications properly amounting to attendances. For the separate treatment of substantive letters and emails, see our guide to routine correspondence in housing disrepair costs.
The test in practice
Compare:
“The Defendant’s surveyor will attend at 10am Tuesday. Please confirm access.”
with:
“I have compared the Defendant’s proposed works with our surveyor’s report. I need to explain what remains outstanding, advise on the £2,500 Part 36 offer and take instructions on whether the settlement deals adequately with the repair obligations.”
A useful check: if that discussion had happened face to face in a conference, would anyone describe it as a routine communication? The medium should not disguise the work.
What the six-minute rule does and does not mean
A routine call is generally allowed as one unit of 0.1 hours. That is a conventional costs unit for simple communications. It does not mean:
- every telephone call can only ever recover six minutes; nor
- every call over six minutes automatically becomes a timed attendance.
Duration is evidence, not the test. A simple conversation allowed to drift for fifteen minutes does not become substantive legal work because the clock passed six minutes. The question stays the same: what was actually being done?
Why disrepair files generate genuinely substantive calls
These claims change while they run. Damp continues, water gets in, heating fails, new defects appear, contractors attend or fail to, works are done or half done, the expert reports, the landlord’s position moves, offers arrive.
Some of the resulting contact is routine. Some involves real legal work. The classification has to be made call by call — which is precisely what a blanket challenge, and a blanket defence, both avoid.
| More likely routine | More likely an attendance |
|---|---|
| Confirming an inspection date | Detailed instructions on disputed defects |
| Checking availability | Explaining the expert’s report and its consequences |
| Confirming receipt of a document | Advising on a Part 36 offer and taking instructions |
| Asking the client to send photographs | Reviewing photographs and identifying continuing defects |
| Advising there is no material update | Taking instructions after failed remedial works |
| Confirming the next procedural date | Advising on issuing proceedings and obtaining authority |
The same subject can sit in either column. “Has the contractor attended?” is routine. “The contractor treated the visible mould, did not repair the external leak the expert identified, and the bedroom wall is wet again” is the start of an attendance.
The attendance note usually decides it
Compare two entries for the same 18 minutes:
“Telephone call with client — 0.3”
“Telephone attendance on client following Defendant’s assertion that repairs were complete; take detailed instructions on outstanding bedroom damp and kitchen water ingress, discuss updated photographs and advise on evidence required — 0.3”
The second does not make the time automatically recoverable. It tells the paying party and the costs judge why the call happened, what was done and why it may be more than a routine unit. The first answers nothing, and a bill full of the first invites exactly the blanket Point that follows.
A costs draftsman should not invent what the file does not record. But where the attendance note has the reason, the bill should use it.
Where the calls come from
Expert evidence
A surveyor’s report may identify defects the client had not recognised, a technical cause of damp, external works, urgent repairs or a position different from the landlord’s inspection. Explaining that, checking factual matters and taking instructions can be well beyond a routine update — though “we have the report and will send it” remains routine. The wider question of what expert work is recoverable is covered in our guide to when a surveyor fee is recoverable and when it is excessive.
Repair works
“Confirm works appointment for Thursday” is one thing. Taking instructions after the works, comparing what was actually done against the schedule and recording that the guttering, bedroom plaster and bathroom leak remain outstanding is another — and it may bear directly on liability, settlement, expert evidence or whether proceedings continue.
Access disputes
Access calls go both ways. Confirming a time is simple. A dispute about whether access was refused, whether an appointment was agreed, whether the contractor attended the right address or whether repeated appointments failed may need detailed instructions, a chronology and advice. “Access call” tells a costs judge almost nothing; the work behind it might.
Calls the landlord caused
Sometimes repeated contact is not claimant-side inefficiency — it is that the position keeps moving. Cancelled appointments, contractors who do not attend, changed works proposals, late disclosure, works declared complete and disputed, a new offer, a shifted liability position: each material development may reasonably require fresh instructions.
CPR 44.3(5)(d) recognises additional work generated by the paying party’s conduct, and landlord conduct can justify additional costs — but only through the chain: event, need for instructions, reasonable attendance, reasonable duration. “The Defendant caused them” is a label, not an argument.
Vulnerability
Some claimants genuinely require more or adapted communication, and CPR 44.3(5)(f) recognises additional work caused by vulnerability. It does not make every attendance reasonable. The analysis — what the participation issue was, what adjustment it required, what work followed — is set out in our guide to recovering additional work caused by vulnerability, and is not repeated here.
Where interpreting assistance is genuinely required, telephone advice naturally takes longer — arranging the interpreter, working through the advice, allowing for questions, confirming understanding, taking instructions. The bill should say so rather than simply recording a long call, while including only what the costs explanation actually needs.
Settlement advice
This is the clearest case. Explaining an offer, the repair terms, the costs consequences, the acceptance period, the litigation risk and the expert position, then taking informed instructions, is legal advice. It is difficult to call that a routine communication because it happened by telephone.
But substantive does not mean unlimited. A straightforward £1,500 offer may not need an hour-long Grade A conference, and the grade point runs separately — see defending senior fee earner rates.
Where client contact becomes vulnerable
- Repeated calls with no identified development. Five “update client” entries in a fortnight invite the obvious question: what changed each time?
- Calls duplicating written advice. If a detailed letter went out and an attendance simply repeats it, explain why both were needed.
- Calls caused by the firm’s own oversight. Failing to take full instructions first time, or correcting an avoidable internal error, is not the paying party’s cost. Neither conduct nor vulnerability should be used to dress that up.
- Administrative matters treated as substantive. Twelve minutes on diary availability is not a timed legal attendance.
- Excessive duration. A call can properly be an attendance and still have taken too long. Separate questions.
- Unsuccessful attempts. Contact may genuinely be needed, but repeated unanswered calls raise questions about method, duplication and whether the time represents legal work.
Three positions, not two
Suppose the challenge is to a 0.8 hour client attendance. There are at least three available answers, and only one of them is “allow in full”:
| Position | Analysis |
|---|---|
| Entirely routine | Should have been a routine communication under 5.14 |
| Substantive but excessive | Properly an attendance; 48 minutes was more than required |
| Substantive and reasonably timed | Subject matter and file evidence justify both |
The outcomes are not confined to allowing everything or reducing to six minutes. A paying party can be wrong on classification and right on duration — and saying so is what makes the rest of the Reply credible.
The six-minute unit is not a reduction tool
“Reduce all calls to 0.1” is not an analysis. Before the routine unit is applied, the prior question has to be answered: were these routine communications within paragraph 5.14?
The reverse applies equally. Recording “attendance with client — 0.2” for every conversation does not convert routine contact into attendances. The underlying file decides the nature of the work, not the label in the bill.
Precedent S makes this easier to see — for both sides
The electronic bill has a specific activity for “Communicate (with client)” at activity 3. That helps identify the volume and cost of client communication.
It also makes the issue much easier for a paying party to isolate. Coding work as client communication says nothing about whether it was necessary, routine, reasonably long or done at the right level. Where client contact is a substantial part of the bill, the data will be found — which makes the underlying narratives more important, not less.
Answering the Point
Take the standard challenge: excessive telephone calls, routine client care, reduce to six-minute units.
A weak Reply says the calls were reasonably and proportionately incurred. A strong one takes it apart:
- Identify what is genuinely routine — and do not defend it as an attendance.
- Identify the substantive attendances — advice, detailed instructions, expert evidence, repair disputes, offers.
- Explain why 5.14 does not classify them as routine — simplicity is the test, and the rule expressly contemplates calls amounting to attendances.
- Address duration separately — classification and quantum are different arguments.
- Connect the chronology — where conduct, changing repairs, expert developments or vulnerability generated the contact.
- Concede the weak items.
The proposed blanket reduction of all client telephone attendances to six-minute units is not accepted. PD 47 distinguishes routine telephone calls from calls which, because of their substance, properly amount to attendances. The receiving party accepts that the routine communications at [items] fall within the ordinary unit treatment.
The remaining attendances were substantive: taking detailed instructions following the Defendant’s failed repair works, advising on the surveyor’s conclusions and the proposed remedial works, and advising upon and obtaining instructions regarding the Part 36 offer. Those cannot properly be characterised as simple routine communications merely because they took place by telephone. The time claimed remains subject to reasonableness, but the Defendant’s blanket reduction does not address the work actually undertaken.
A Reply conceding five genuinely routine calls while defending six substantive attendances is considerably more persuasive than one insisting every call be paid in full — the same discipline that runs through the recurring reductions in housing disrepair Points of Dispute.
Do not use conduct or vulnerability as boilerplate
“Calls increased because of Defendant conduct” and “the Claimant was vulnerable, therefore additional contact was required” are both too vague to survive.
The chronology has to do the work: missed works appointment → client telephoned with the update → instructions taken → response required. Used where they do not genuinely apply, both arguments weaken the points that were actually good.
When to concede
Some of these items should go — routine appointment calls claimed as attendances, repeated calls reporting no update, duplicated advice, calls caused by an earlier oversight, vague entries with no attendance note behind them, unnecessary senior involvement, excessive duration on simple issues, repeated unsuccessful attempts.
There is no commercial benefit in defending weak calls because they appear in the bill. Protect the substantive work; concede the routine work where the rule genuinely applies.
An audit before the bill goes out
- How many client calls are claimed, and which are genuinely routine?
- Have routine calls been treated consistently?
- Which calls properly amount to attendances, and what was each about?
- Is there a contemporaneous attendance note, with duration recorded?
- Was advice given, or were detailed instructions taken?
- Did expert evidence need explaining, or were works in dispute?
- Did the landlord’s conduct generate the instructions?
- Did vulnerability genuinely require additional or adapted communication?
- Was the right fee earner used, and could any calls have been combined?
- Is there duplication with written advice, and were unsuccessful attempts excessive?
- Does the narrative explain the purpose well enough to defend it?
If “why was this a timed attendance rather than a routine call?” cannot be answered quickly, the paying party will ask the same question and get no better answer.
Key takeaway
Most of these disputes reduce to three stages, and they should be argued separately:
- Classification — routine communication, or an attendance?
- Necessity — was the communication reasonably required for the conduct of the claim?
- Quantum — were the duration and the fee earner reasonable?
A telephone is the method of communication. The costs question is what legal work happened during the call. A paying party can be wrong that a call was routine and still right that it took too long, which is why blanket positions on either side tend to lose ground that did not need losing.
We prepare and negotiate Housing Disrepair costs for claimant solicitor firms, including client-contact challenges. Has the Defendant reduced every call to six minutes? Send us the bill, the Points of Dispute and the file and we will separate the routine communications from the genuine attendances, on a fixed fee agreed before instruction.
Sources: Practice Direction 47, in particular paragraph 5.13 on communications and how routine and non-routine items are presented, paragraph 5.14 defining routine communications by their simplicity, and paragraph 5.22 on the six-minute unit basis; the electronic bill activity list, activity 3, “Communicate (with client)”; and CPR 44.3 and 44.4 for reasonableness and proportionality, including 44.3(5)(d) and 44.3(5)(f).