Guide for arbitrators

Your role

You decide the dispute. The administrator sends notices, keeps the record and hosts hearings, but nobody at the administrator can edit your orders or your award, or make a decision for you.

Your account uses two-step verification at every sign-in, and decisions ask for a fresh code: see Accounts and sign-in.

Accepting an appointment

An appointment reaches you as an offer under Offers. Please answer within 3 days.

1. Read the case summary and the parties.
2. Make your section 12 disclosure: upload the signed disclosure, and if you have circumstances to disclose, describe them.
3. Accept and sign with a fresh one-time code, or decline and give a reason.

After you accept, the parties are told and an objection window opens (15 days by default). How the appointment is made, and the safeguards around it, are in Appointing the arbitrator.

Orders and directions

• Procedural orders set the timetable, starting with the first procedural order (PO1).
• Adjournments move a hearing or a deadline.
• Standing directions let routine reminders go to a silent respondent in the tribunal’s name without your signature each time. You set the most reminders (1 to 20, 2 by default), the dates and the channels.

Draft orders wait in your Review queue. Once you sign, each order is sent to every party as an order of the tribunal.

Running hearings

Hearings are video calls in the browser, one meeting per phase: say your side, admit or deny, interim (only if relief was asked for), argument, and reply to argument. If the respondent agrees to the claim, one call confirms the agreement.

• Put points to the parties and record each answer as admitted or denied. The denied points become the issues for argument.
• If a party does not join, choose whether to proceed on the record or adjourn. You decide; nothing is automatic.
• You may record the hearing, and you end it with End hearing.

How joining works for the parties is in Video hearings.

Interim relief (s.17)

An application for interim relief can arrive at any stage, from the client or a respondent. In the Interim desk choose the procedure (notice to the other side, decide on the papers, a short hearing, or urgent directions), then the outcome: an interim order, an interim award, or refusal. Give reasons, and issue the decision with a fresh code. It is served on both sides.

Writing and signing the award

1. Write the award in the award editor. Findings on amounts are checked arithmetically as you go.
2. Finalise it. From then on the text is locked.
3. Sign award with a fresh second step.

The administrator then checks the form (signature, stamp, parties, addresses), adds the stamp duty details, and releases it. The signed award goes to every party, by post as well as electronically, and the challenge period starts from service.