Interim payment calculator

An interim payment is a payment on account of damages before the final judgment, governed by CPR Part 25 on interim remedies, with interim payments at rules 25.6 to 25.7 as amended in April 2025. The cap in CPR 25.7(4) is that the court must not order more than a reasonable proportion of the likely amount of the final judgment. On the Part 25 text as published on the justice.gov.uk rules pages after the April 2025 restructure, the same cap appears at rule 25.20(1), so verify the rule reference at source.

Where a periodical payments order may follow, Eeles v Cobham Hire Services Ltd [2009] EWCA Civ 204 governs the approach. The likely amount of the final judgment for the cap is the likely capital award, assessed conservatively, not the capitalised value of heads likely to be met by periodical payments. The stage 1 heads are general damages, past losses, interest, and accommodation of the Roberts v Johnstone type. The court must not fetter the trial judge's discretion to award future losses by periodical payments, nor establish an irreversible status quo, for example by funding an accommodation purchase, without a high degree of confidence that the trial judge would make that capital allocation. Stage 2, which capitalises future heads into the base, is available only on that confident prediction, which is why the worksheet gates it behind an explicit opt-in and confirmation.

Related authority includes Smith v Bailey [2014] EWHC 2569 (QB) and PAL v Davison [2021] EWHC 1108 (QB) on the date for quantifying past losses. The reasonable proportion itself is discretionary. No statutory percentage exists, so the worksheet takes the percentage from you and flags the discretion rather than suggesting a figure.

Provisional damages let a claimant take an award now and return for further damages if a specified serious disease or serious deterioration develops later. The power comes from Senior Courts Act 1981 section 32A and County Courts Act 1984 section 51, which are in identical wording. The statutory condition is that it is proved or admitted that there is a chance that at some definite or indefinite time in the future the injured person will develop some serious disease or suffer some serious deterioration in their physical or mental condition. The Senior Courts Act 1981 was renamed from the Supreme Court Act 1981 by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 with effect from 1 October 2009, so older cases cite the Supreme Court Act.

The three questions come from Willson v Ministry of Defence [1991] 1 All ER 638, approved in Curi v Colina [1998] EWCA Civ 1326. The chance must be measurable, not fanciful, however slim. The disease or deterioration must be serious, meaning a clear-cut and severable triggering event rather than gradual continuing deterioration, and progressive osteoarthritis was held not serious on that ground. The third question is the court's discretion to award provisional rather than once and for all damages. A recent application is Mathieu v Hinds [2022] EWHC 924 (QB), where an epilepsy risk was granted and post-traumatic dementia was refused as not a more than fanciful chance.

The procedure is in CPR Part 41 Section I, rules 41.1 to 41.3, and Practice Direction 41A. The order must specify the disease or deterioration and the period for a future application under CPR 41.2(2). Only one further damages application may be made per specified disease, on a minimum of 28 days written notice, under CPR 41.3, and the claim must be pleaded in the particulars of claim under CPR 16.4(1)(d) and PD 16 4.4. Damages Act 1996 section 3, on the effect of a later death and a Fatal Accidents Act claim, is noted here and is not computed by these tools.

The worksheet does not quantify costs or the likely amount of the final judgment itself. Every head value is your input. It does not compute periodical payments, their indexation, or Ogden multipliers, which are separate modules. It returns a worksheet base and a remaining headroom figure, not a court order, an entitlement, or a prediction of what a court will award. The provisional damages checker never returns a money figure under any circumstances, and neither tool exercises the judicial discretion that decides the reasonable proportion or the award of provisional damages.