The High Court is getting a new Business and Property Division, a structural change announced by the Lady Chief Justice on 2026-06-02 that will replace the Chancery Division and bring several of the court’s most specialist civil lists under one roof.
The new division will sit at London’s Rolls Building and in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle, covering the Commercial Court, the Technology and Construction Court, the Admiralty Court and the Business, Financial, Competition, Insolvency and Companies, Intellectual Property, Property, Trusts and Probate, and Revenue lists. It is a move aimed at the kind of high-value, complex and often international disputes that have become a calling card of England and Wales’s civil courts, and it lands now because the judiciary is not merely talking about tidying up labels. It is setting out how the High Court will be organised from here on in.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill said the change builds on the success of the Business and Property courts and would give users greater clarity while strengthening access to justice. She also said the legal system can feel complex, old-fashioned and difficult to navigate, and that she wants the courts to be open and straightforward for anyone who needs them. In her view, the new division more accurately reflects what people and businesses need today and helps reinforce Britain’s role as a leading centre for dispute resolution.
David Lammy backed the plan, saying the government is pleased to support a judiciary-led initiative to modernise the High Court and that the reform will help ensure the UK remains a global hub for corporate litigation. That support matters because the change is being sold as modernisation rather than upheaval, even though it will gather a wide range of business and property work into one division and give it a new title and president.
There is still a boundary to that change. The wider structure of the King’s Bench Division will not be touched, and the existing courts and High Court lists will stay in place. The reorganisation is meant to simplify the path into specialist civil justice, not redraw the whole map of the senior courts.
Sir Colin Birss, who was sworn in as chancellor in November 2025, is expected to take the title of president of the Business and Property Division from October. That makes the next stage practical rather than theoretical: the courts are being renamed, regrouped and given a clearer front door, while the day-to-day work of moving cases into the new structure is the part lawyers will now be watching most closely.
