What the data says about challenging arbitral awards in England

Are the English courts increasingly upholding more challenges to arbitration awards under sections 67, 68 and 69 of the Arbitration Act?

The 2023/2024 court year saw a record[1] number of challenges to arbitral awards filed with the English Commercial Court (113), a 59% increase in applications compared to the previous year. Does that suggest that the English courts are becoming more interventionist, or that it is becoming easier or more common to challenge or attempt to challenge arbitral awards in the English courts? If true, that could have significant implications on the overall perception of England and Wales as an arbitral centre and the English courts’ approach to dealing with arbitral challenges.

However, as is so often the case, those numbers in isolation do not tell the whole story: although the number of applications may be at a recent high, that says nothing about the number of successful challenges or the courts’ approach to those applications.

So, does the increase in the number of attempted challenges form part of a wider trend? If so, has that translated into an increase in the number of challenges granted by the courts? And to what extent does the number of arbitrations more generally have an impact?

In this article, we look at six years’ worth of statistics from the Commercial Court, as well as data from various arbitral institutions, to consider those questions.

Click here to access the stats and read our analysis: https://cms.law/en/int/publication/cms-arbitration-atlas/england-many-attempts-not-many-successes-what-the-data-says-about-challenging-arbitral-awards