All FCA Arbitrators are barristers from Falcon Chambers, with extensive experience of both litigating and arbitrating property disputes. FCA guarantees that a knowledgeable and experienced property expert will decide your case. Each FCA Arbitrator is highly regarded in his or her sphere of practice, be it landlord and tenant, real property, rent review, agriculture or planning and compulsory purchase.

Your dispute is not just another claim in an overburdened legal system. FCA has the resources and procedures to manage your dispute from beginning to end, smoothly and efficiently, with your interests at the forefront.

• We have a dedicated Arbitration Clerk to provide a clear and reliable point of contact, to deal with all enquiries and keep you informed of hearing dates and all administrative procedures.
• Each case will be handled personally by the chosen Arbitrator who will have complete knowledge of and control over the papers; documents will not disappear into an administrative black hole.
• Because a single Arbitrator presides over the whole of the arbitration process you can be confident that your dispute will be handled consistently throughout.
• Arbitration with FCA is carefully crafted to be streamlined. Very often an oral hearing will be unnecessary and the Arbitrator can provide a reasoned award on paper alone. In a suitable case, an award can be issued in as little as 20 working days from beginning to end.
• When an oral hearing is needed, the hearing date is a professional commitment on the part of your arbitrator: he or she is guaranteed to be available on the selected date or dates.
• Eradication of unduly complex court procedures.

Court procedure seems now to be more burdensome than ever. Have you used the correct type of claim form? What about the acknowledgment of service? And the directions questionnaire? Is your disclosure report completed properly? And on time? Of course, you’ll need to fill out your Precedent H. And we mustn’t overlook the pre-trial checklist. Incidentally, don’t make a mistake – because in a post-Jackson world you don’t want to have to seek relief from sanctions.

FCA is free from these aggravations. There is no form-filling, no box-ticking and no paper-shuffling – just a simple and sensible procedure, adapted to the needs of the case, to help achieve a just and efficient resolution of the dispute.

Court-centred litigation is expensive. Much of that is front-loaded before you get anywhere near seeing a judge. Compliance with pre-action Protocols, often merely for the sake of compliance, is very much the order of the day. On top, mediation must usually be undertaken before one can start proceedings - if only to avoid adverse costs orders.

Then when you start a court case, there soon follow tier upon tier of costs. For instance, in court, if you want to issue a claim: you pay a fee. (The Ministry of Justice is currently consulting on a proposal to raise the issue fee in money claims to 5% of the value of the claim, subject to a £10,000 cap). When your case is allocated to a track, or if you make an interim application: again, in both cases you pay a fee. Fees are payable when you file a pre-trial checklist, and when a hearing is listed. It’s not hard to see how it all mounts up so quickly.

When you arbitrate with FCA, things are very different. You are freed from Protocols. Also, the fees you pay in court simply don’t arise. In fact, recognising how important costs are, we will where possible arbitrate on a fixed fee basis, meaning that you won’t have any nasty surprises when the dispute is determined.

Court orders may be subject to appeal - adding delay, cost and uncertainty for those concerned. Unsuccessful parties can – and do - “play the system”. A judge’s decision may turn out to be no more than “Round One”, and even frivolous challenges can see matters drawn out inordinately. So you might win and yet still be denied a clear outcome for months or even years.

Arbitrating with FCA will determine the dispute with greater finality than is often found in court. Under the Arbitration Act 1996, there is no right of appeal to a court against an arbitrator’s findings of fact. In most cases, an arbitration award can be appealed on a point of law only with the court’s permission, and only if the award is “obviously wrong” (a very high threshold). The parties can even agree to eliminate the possibility of appeal on a point of law altogether. A challenge alleging irregularity in the arbitration process will not succeed unless the irregularity is a serious one, causing substantial injustice. And all challenges are subject to strict time limits.

The courts have repeatedly emphasised that arbitration awards should be read in a reasonable and commercial way, without nitpicking. Instead, the courts respect the arbitration process and seek to uphold arbitration awards wherever reasonably possible.