[2] The CPR were designed to improve access to justice by making legal proceedings cheaper, quicker, and easier to understand for non-lawyers.

As a consequence of this, many former, older legal terms were replaced with ‘plain English’ equivalents, such as "claimant" for "plaintiff" and "witness summons" for "subpoena".

[9] The report was accompanied by draft rules of practice designed to implement Lord Woolf's proposals.

These rules granted wide management powers to the court,[10] proposed that cases be allocated to one of three tracks depending on their nature, limiting or requiring specific actions, and introduced the concept of proportionality to the costs regime.

Two approaches to the assessment of proportionality arose in the case of West v Stockport NHS Foundation Trust (2019), in particular on appeal from the initial trial.

The appeal judges referred to a "debate between the parties as to whether a proportionality challenge was limited to the circumstances of the particular case ('the narrower interpretation'), or whether it was to be assessed by reference to all the circumstances, and so encompass matters which were not necessarily related to the case in question ('the wider interpretation')".

On a reading of CPR 44, which contains general rules about costs, it was felt to be clear that "questions of proportionality are to be considered by reference to the specific matters noted in 44.3(5) and, if relevant, any wider circumstances identified under r. 44.4(1).

[19] To support the ethos of narrowing the issues prior to the use of proceedings and encapsulate best practice, the CPR introduced "pre-action protocols".

Paragraph 1 of the Practice Direction defines the purpose of pre-action protocols as: This list was last updated on 6 September 2007.

In addition, the protocol might provide grounds to show a party had or had not behaved so unreasonably as to merit penalty under another Rule (for instance CPR 44.3).

[22] This was intended to help laypersons comprehend legal terms more easily and to make the judicial process faster and less expensive.