# Practice Direction 6: Interest

Version 1.0. Issued by the Registrar under Rule 8.1. Applies from 5 September 2026.

**1. Purpose.** Rule 5.1 lets the Court order payment. A sum paid late is worth less than a sum paid on time, and a rule that leaves the difference where it falls rewards the party that delays. The Full Bench has dismissed a claim for interest because no rate was fixed anywhere in the law of the Court, and left open whether interest may be awarded at all. This Direction answers the question and fixes the rate, so that every judge awards interest on the same footing and no party need argue the rate afresh.

**2. Power.** The Court may award simple interest on a sum it orders to be paid. Interest is part of the order for payment, not a separate head of relief, and is honoured with it under Rule 2.3.

**3. Period.** Interest runs from the date the sum fell due to the date of payment. For restitution of a payment made by mistake, the sum falls due on the date of the demand for its return, or on the date of receipt where the recipient knew of the mistake when it received the payment. For a sum due under an agreement, it falls due on the date the agreement fixed; where no date was fixed, on the date the Court finds it became payable.

**4. Rate.** The rate is 8 per cent per annum, simple. The Registrar may vary the rate prospectively by amendment to this Direction; a variation applies to periods after the amendment takes effect and to no period before it.

**5. Computation.** Interest is computed daily on the principal sum alone, at the annual rate divided by 365, for each day in the period in paragraph 3, and is expressed in the currency of the order.

**6. What carries no interest.** Interest is not awarded on an adjustment to reputation under Practice Direction 4, nor on a sum the Court merely declares to be owing without ordering its payment.

**7. The order.** A judge who awards interest states in the order the rate, the date from which interest runs, and the basis on which that date was chosen. An order for payment silent on interest carries none.