News - Spring 2007

Items which have previously appeared on this news page can now be found in our Archive.

ANM – Widest Mediation Survey in the UK

All members either put in or should put into an online survey information about mediations they have done. Since 2004 ANM has continued to monitor mediations and we now have statistics from almost 600 mediations carried out by members over the last 2 years or so. These show:

Most mediators are appointed directly rather than through mediation providers
Court Scheme appointments managed through the National Mediation Helpline are growing slowly
The largest subject areas for mediations are either general contract disputes or construction disputes
One of the smallest subject areas are personal injury and clinical negligence disputes
Almost half the disputes handled by members are valued at over £100,000
Less than 10% of disputes are valued at less than £10,000
Over 75% of mediations settle
Even when they don’t settle the parties do make progress in narrowing the issues or managing the dispute more effectively

This information and more is available by logging onto the Survey Monkey website.

ANM as a Mediation Provider approved by the DCA

2006 saw the Association approved by the Department of Constitutional Affairs as an organisation that met the high standards expected of its members. We satisfied the DCA that all panel mediators were properly accredited and trained, that they maintained adequate professional insurance, achieved good reports from the mediations carried out through the Association and continued to hone their skills by attending further courses during the year. Users of the Associations services should be confident that we will do what the label says we will do in providing a first class mediation service. Given our limited administration this is a considerable achievement and says a lot for the commitment of all our members in improving access to quality mediators and to improve access to justice as a whole.

Mediators unregulated by EU

Mediators are already regulated by both the organisations which trained them, by this Association and by the Law Society or whichever professional body they belong to. We were pleased that the EU Parliament rejected proposals by the Commission to define the required standards for mediators. It goes without saying that whatever the EU had in mind would be less onerous than the standards applied here. There was absolutely non point is adding another regulatory layer.

Law Society launches Dispute Resolution Service

Now users can access the Law Society’s full range of ADR advice and expertise by logging onto www.lawsociety.org.uk and finding the link to the service. This should be effective as from the end of May 2007.

CIArb re-launches its DR Service

For a long time the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators was associated much more with Arbitration than with anything else. Since 1995 it has provided a panel of mediators and since 1998 a panel of adjudicators. The new service comes under the arm of a wholly owned subsidiary called IDRS providing advice on and appointments of a full range of DR professionals. Find out more by logging onto www.idrs.ltd.co.uk.

Summer School 2006

The Association of Northern Mediators ran the 7th Summer School with David Richbell and Joanna Kalowski at the beginning of June. Members of the Association of Northern Mediators and the Association of Midland Mediators met up in the Yorkshire Dales for a thought provoking 2 days. This seventh summer school took us through a wide ranging discussion on using mediator skills to overcome difficulties thrown up by parties attending mediations. It was universally declared to be the best summer school yet.

Government announces national court mediation scheme

With effect from sometime in early summer the existing court schemes running in Chester and north Wales, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Teeside and all Yorkshire Courts will be subsumed into a national scheme run centally through something called the National Mediation Helpline. All mediation enquiries will be channelled through a single point by using the helpline number 0845 6030809. Currently there are 5 providers listed whose mediators are then picked from their rotas. This Association will be registered as a provider with the Civil Mediation Council for all the courts within the region once the new scheme comes into effect.

What will this provide? The changes are aimed at providing an efficient administration at minimal cost. Users will be offered a scale of charges probably based on the current scales of £250, £500, or £750 per party for a time limited mediation. These scales offer considerable cost savings for users, and mediators are sourced within 2 working days. This Association will play a very active part in running the court scheme within the courts running from Chester and North Wales through to the East coast of Yorkshire.

When will Courts penalise refusal to mediate? - Court of Appeal guidance

The Court of Appeal has given important general guidance in the use of ADR and mediation in personal injury litigation and in particular has ruled on the circumstances where it is appropriate to penalise a party who refuses mediation. The Court's judgement (in the consolidated appeals of Halsey -v- Milton Keynes General NHS Trust and Steel -v- Joy and Halliday) was reached after giving consideration to the representations of four ADR providers and interested bodies and can therefore be taken as its definitive view on how ADR should and should not be encouraged in this field.

The court declined to penalise the refusing parties in both cases, deciding that refusal was not unreasonable in the circumstances. At first blush, the judgement appears to be a major setback to supporters of mediation. On careful analysis however, the jury is out as to whether the guidance given by the Court of Appeal will in fact encourage the greater use of mediation, in particular in personal injury cases where the take up of mediation has been notoriously slow. An article by Paul Hughes of Crutes solicitors.

Read the full article by clicking on this link
Read the judgement in full by clicking on this link. (PDF document)

2005 Mediation Survey published - over 1000 mediations

The 2005 Mediation Survey has now been published. Our survey this year asked the members of the Association how many mediations they had conducted during 2005, and how they were appointed. It included additional questions about the types of mediation and their values. This year the survey analyses results over 5 years of monitoring mediations. If you would like to periodically look at the results they are available on the Survey Monkey system

The results show a number of trends:

Direct appointments havew overtaken appointments from primary providers by a margin of almost 3:1.
Court Schemes have a limited success although their numbers outstrip appointments by national providers if the unrecorded small claims mediations are added to the 29 recorded.
The success rate has increased above 75% indicating a margin of success not too different from for instance CEDR’s statistics.
Of those that did not succeed there were significant gains recorded despite the lack of success to iunclude narrowing o issues and better communications.
Sectors such as general commercial and construction disputes produced the largest numbers of mediations. Personal injury and health care disputes produced either a reduced or otherwise a poor showing.

We would welcome comments and suggestions from those reading the statistics as we aim to show mediation and its effects in as transparent and accurate way as possible.

Stop press – national mediation awareness week 2005/6

The government said that it is going to repeat its mediation awareness week in 2006 following last October’s successful week when mediators, judges, court staff, and the Law Society and the Bar all ran different events highlhting the uses of mediation. This year there will be events taking place in the first week in October 2006.

Stop press – government announces savings of £24 million

Last year the government worked ut that it had saved something of the order of £14 million following using mediation to cut down the time and the costs of resolving disputes. This years savings are even greater. The Department of Constiutional Affairs in London has reaffirmed its determination to see litigation used as a last resort.

Stop press – insurers announce new protocol for personal injury aimed at reducing the costs of resolving disputes

The Association of British Insurers announced in November 2006 that it was establishing a new protocol for insurers to cut down the use of litigation to solve insurance claims. The ABI claimed that for every £1 spent on compensation a further 93p in costs was being paid out to claims handlers for claims of less than £15,000. Even for claims in the scale above this the average was over 40p per £1. The protocol will involve complainant’s completing standard claim forms and insurers than having 3 months to investigate and reply. Insurers would offer a free legal advice service. There is then an opportunity to mediate and only if that fails will the complainant then go to court. For further information look at the ABI website and search for the report titled ‘Care and Compensation’.

Information available for download

There are now several documents available for download from this website. All the downloaded files are in Portable Document Format (unless otherwise specified) and will require Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view.

ANM Guidelines for Mediation

The Association publishes guidelines for mediations and the 10th edition (February 2004) is available along with the Agreement for Mediation.

EU Code of Ethics for mediators, monitoring and complaints

This Association now applies the EU Code of Ethics so that all mediator members who are on our panels must recognise the code and adhere to our monitoring procedures to ensure that users obtain the best possible service from their mediator. A feedback form and complaint form are available as PDF downloads.

Specialist groups

The ANM has Special Interest Groups as well. These cover specialist areas in personal injury and clinical negligence, technology and computers, employment and construction and engineering. These links will give you more information on each.

The Association of Northern Mediators

Civil and Commercial Mediators in the North of England