Baroness Carr, the Lady Chief Justice of England and Wales, has recently announced significant reforms to the structure of the High Court. From October of this year, the Chancery Division – the court that typically deals with commercial work – will be replaced by a new Business and Property Division, bringing many of the courts responsible for commercial and business disputes under one “roof”.

Out with the old…

The reform marks a bittersweet end to my beloved Chancery Division. It’s where as a young barrister I wanted to practice and I have been lucky enough to do so my entire career. The Chancery Division’s long history: with its early roots dating back to the Court of Chancery of the fourteenth century and the King’s Chancery several centuries earlier: make it one of the oldest institutions in the English legal system.

Critics of the previous structure have long argued that the division of commercial work between the Chancery Division and the King’s Bench Division was increasingly artificial. Despite handling similar types of high-value business disputes, courts such as the Commercial Court and Technology and Construction Court remained administratively separate from the Business and Property Courts. This may not accurately reflect the requirements of modern litigation – where disputes often span multiple areas of law and require specialist expertise drawn from different jurisdictions.

“Some might say that our three existing High Court Divisions no longer represent the work we actually do… Perhaps we should think about whether judicial leadership and the High Court Divisions should not more accurately reflect the types of work that are actually being done by our courts in 2025.” (Baroness Carr, Dec 2025)

…In with the new?

Under the new structure my former mini pupil master, Sir Colin Birss, currently Chancellor of the High Court, will become President of the Business and Property Division – headquartered in the Rolls Building in London, and continuing to operate from regional centres in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Newcastle. 

In addition to the specialist courts already administered within the Chancery Division, he will assume responsibility for three courts that have historically sat within the King’s Bench Division: the Commercial Court, the Technology and Construction Court and the Admiralty Court. These courts will join the existing Business and Property Courts jurisdictions, including the Business List, Financial List, Competition List, Insolvency and Companies List, Intellectual Property List, Property, Trusts and Probate List and Revenue List.

Bringing these specialist jurisdictions together under a single division is intended to improve efficiency and make judicial deployment more flexible, enabling cases to be assigned more easily to judges with the most appropriate expertise. Such a single division had been proposed at the time of the CPR being developed in 1998 but was not followed through.

The government has welcomed the changes. In a statement to Parliament, Justice Secretary David Lammy said the reform would strengthen the international profile of the courts, improve accessibility for domestic and overseas users and provide a clearer system of judicial governance through a single point of leadership. The planned reforms come against the backdrop of a wider push by the judiciary for greater transparency in England’s courts, priorities set out by Carr.

The changes will be implemented through an Order in Council, accompanied by amendments to the Civil Procedure Rules and related practice directions.

Ch.D it’s been memorable.

© Lawrence Power 2026

Sources

Reforms set out: https://www.judiciary.uk/the-lady-chief-justice-and-lord-chancellor-modernise-the-high-court-through-establishment-of-the-business-and-property-division/

History of the Chancery Division: https://rozenberg.substack.com/p/new-high-court-structure

Lecture by Baroness Carr: https://www.judiciary.uk/lecture-by-the-lady-chief-justice-the-constitutional-reform-act-20-years-on/

Wider push for transparency: https://www.ft.com/content/029feacc-6c07-4031-b077-5f114e91f011?countryCode=GBR&multistepRegForm=multistep&syn-25a6b1a6=1