The Court of Support: What the English Commercial Court Report Tells Us About Arbitration

Arbitration continues to be a mainstay and driver of new claims in the English Commercial Court (“the Commercial Court”). According to the Commercial Court Report published in March 2026, arbitration-related claims accounted for approximately 30% of the 1140 new claims issued during the 2024-2025 legal year.

Arbitration-related matters were the second largest category of new claims. When broken down by category, arbitration-related matters take up six of the top ten claim types. Appeals on a point of law under section 69 of the Arbitration Act 1996 (“the 1996 Act”) alone account for 8% of new claims. Enforcement applications under sections 66 and 101 add a further 7%, while other arbitration appeals and applications contribute 6%. Section 68 serious irregularity challenges, section 44 injunction applications, and combined section 68/69 applications each account for a further 3%.

Interestingly, the period covered by the report appears to be from October 2024 to September 2025. As the Arbitration Act 2025 (“the 2025 Act”) came into force on 1 August 2025 and does not apply to court proceedings in respect of pre-commencement arbitrations or awards, any impact the 2025 Act may have on the figures remains to be seen.

This post examines trends in challenges to arbitral awards under sections 67, 68 and 69 of the Arbitration Act 1996, the courts' role in supporting arbitral proceedings through section 44 applications, and what the statistics suggest about London's continued attractiveness as a leading arbitral seat.

Section 69: Increase In Applications but Permission Remains an Effective Barrier

The number of section 69 applications, which permit a party to appeal to the court on a point of law arising out of an award, rose from 53 in 2023-2024 to 73 in 2024-25. This is a significant increase of nearly 38% in a single year.

Given that parties can agree to exclude the right of appeal on a point of law and appeals on a point of law are expressly waived in respect of arbitrations governed by LCIA and ICC rules, the increase in figures is somewhat surprising. However, they are more commonly permitted in ad hoc arbitrations and in sectors such as maritime arbitration conducted under LMAA terms. The rise may reflect a genuine increase in disputes where parties consider that a tribunal has gone wrong on a point of law, or it may reflect a broader willingness to test the boundaries of the permission threshold.

Over the year, 21 section 69 applications for permission to appeal were refused, while 18 were granted, with 45 awaiting a permission decision or final disposal. In the previous year, 10 were granted while 32 were refused permission. While the number of applications granted permission did increase, the permission stage appears to remain an effective barrier and is consistent with the court's longstanding approach of treating section 69 as a narrow gateway rather than a general right of appeal. Practitioners advising clients on whether to pursue a section 69 application should be clear-eyed about the prospects, even where permission is granted, success on the merits is far from guaranteed.

The case of Aston Martin MENA Ltd v Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd [2025] EWHC 2531 (Comm), illustrated the courts’ restrained approach to appeals on points of law. Although permission to appeal was granted, the court ultimately dismissed the appeal, emphasising that courts should be slow to interfere with a tribunal's conclusions on contractual interpretation, particularly where those conclusions turn on extensive factual findings with which the tribunal is more closely familiar.

While it’s difficult to get a complete picture given that some cases take more than a year to be determined, only 2 appeals had been completed on the merits, both unsuccessfully. The average time to reach a permission decision was 118 days, marginally up from 115 days the previous year. For those applications where permission was granted, the average time from receipt to final disposal was 308 days. This is a significant increase on the figures for the previous two years at 214 and 263 days.

Section 68: A Persistent but Rarely Successful Route

Section 68 applications, which challenge an award on grounds of serious irregularity increased by 23% from 39 in 2023-2024 to 48 in 2024-2025. Eight applications were dismissed at a hearing. It does not appear that any were successful during the last year, while 8 were said to have been partially successful the previous year. The report notes that the success rate for section 68 applications remains low.

Unlike section 69 appeals, parties cannot contract out of the court's supervisory jurisdiction under section 68. The provision reflects a minimum safeguard against serious procedural failings and therefore remains available irrespective of the rules chosen by the parties.

A recent section 68 challenge which succeeded was Indus Powertech Inc v Echjay Industries Pvt Ltd [2026] EWHC 827 (Comm), where the tribunal was found to have failed to deal with causation issues that had been squarely put before it, causing substantial injustice to Indus. This resulted in those issues being remitted to the tribunal.

Section 68 sets a deliberately high threshold - the irregularity complained of must be serious, it must relate to one of the specified categories, and it must have caused or be likely to cause substantial injustice. The courts have interpreted these requirements strictly, and the data bears that out again this year.

The rise in applications is nonetheless notable. It may reflect the same underlying increase in arbitration activity that is driving the section 69 figures, or it may suggest that parties are increasingly willing to bring challenges that have limited prospects of success. Either way, practitioners should be candid with clients about the difficulty of succeeding under section 68. The threshold is not merely technical; it reflects a deliberate policy choice to protect the finality of arbitral awards and to limit the scope for losing parties to relitigate disputes through the back door of a serious irregularity challenge.

Section 67: Jurisdiction Challenges

The court received 21 jurisdiction challenges under section 67 of the 1996 Act during 2024-2025, a modest decrease from the 24 filed the previous year. Section 67 allows a party to challenge an award on the basis that the tribunal lacked substantive jurisdiction: a tribunal that had no jurisdiction to decide a dispute cannot produce a binding award, however procedurally sound the process may have been. Similarly to section 68, the right to challenge an award on jurisdictional grounds under section 67 cannot be excluded by agreement.

Of the 21 applications filed, 5 were dismissed following a hearing, 2 were dismissed on the papers, 1 was unsuccessful, and 1 was discontinued, with the remaining 12 still pending. The relatively small number of applications, and the fact that a significant proportion were dismissed either on the papers or at a hearing, is consistent with the broader picture across all three challenge routes: parties are willing to bring these applications, but the courts are quick to dispose of those that lack merit.

A rare successful challenge under section 67 was the case of Ras Al Khaimah Investment Authority v Republic of India [2025] EWHC 1553 (Comm) (discussed further here), where the Commercial Court reversed an UNCITRAL tribunal decision that it lacked jurisdiction under the India-UAE bilateral investment treaty, showing that the courts will intervene where necessary. However, the decision was appealed with judgment reserved following the hearing in May 2026.

Under the 1996 Act the court approached the question of jurisdiction afresh on appeal, whereas changes introduced under the 2025 Act mean that parties will be prevented from raising new points or evidence that they failed to raise before the tribunal, unless they were not known or unable to do so at the time. While these changes may not reduce the number of section 67 challenges, if the figures above on section 68 and 69 are anything to go by, they will likely reduce the costs involved and time required for such proceedings.  

 
Section 44: Court Support for Arbitration

The number of section 44 injunction applications, by which parties seek court ordered interim relief in support of arbitral proceedings, fell from 50 in 2023-2024 to 34 in 2024-2025, a decrease of 32%. However, it is still up on figures for previous years with 20 such applications in 2022-2023 and only 15 in 2021-2022.

The limits of the court’s supporting role were highlighted in the case of AAA v BBB [2025] EWHC 1647 (Comm), where the court set aside a worldwide freezing order that had been obtained under section 44(2) in aid of a foreign-seated arbitration, due to a failure to serve the claim form before it expired, and a concealment of material facts in an extension application. This highlights the continued importance of procedural compliance and the careful scrutiny applied to applications for interim relief.

The section 44 figures exclude anti-suit injunctions granted to enforce arbitration agreements where no arbitration seated in England and Wales has been or is to be commenced. Those applications are brought under section 37(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 rather than section 44 of the 1996 Act.

The overall picture on section 44 is one of moderate but variable demand. The court remains an important resource for parties who need interim protection during the arbitral process, whether to preserve assets, obtain evidence, or secure other relief that a tribunal cannot itself grant.

London's International Position

Approximately 75% of the Commercial Court's caseload is international in character involving parties or subject matter outside the UK. Arbitration sits at the heart of that international work. The report records that the court's engagement with international counterparts included a roundtable with the Singapore International Commercial Court at which one of the topics discussed was whether courts are achieving the right balance in their support for international arbitration.

The data in this report suggests that the English courts are active supervisors of the arbitral process, with hundreds of arbitration-related applications each year. Whether that level of court involvement represents appropriate support or an excessive degree of intervention is a question on which practitioners and arbitrators will have different views. What is clear is that London's position as a desirable arbitral seat depends not only on the quality of its arbitrators and the sophistication of its legal market, but also on the courts' continued willingness to engage constructively with arbitration-related applications while maintaining the finality that makes arbitration attractive in the first place.