‘Costs’ means all costs

Regina (Chorion plc) v Westminster City Council (CA TLR 21 October)

An order awarding costs which provides ‘such costs to be assessed if not agreed’, could only mean all the costs and not merely part of the costs awarded against the other party. It was not therefore appropriate for a judge on the subsequent assessment of those costs to limit them to a single issue, one of several raised in the application for judicial review. The assessment of costs is a different procedure from deciding whether a party was to be awarded all its costs or only part of its costs.