Home » Answers Hub » The 4.30pm rule
Under CPR 6.26, a document served by personal service, fax or email, or by delivering it to or leaving it at a permitted address, is deemed served the same day only if the step is completed before 4.30pm on a business day. Done at 4.31pm, or on a weekend or bank holiday, service is deemed to take place on the next business day. The rule does not apply to claim forms, which have their own second business day regime.
The 4.30pm cut off exists so that a document arriving as an office closes does not silently start a deadline nobody could act on. It borrows the traditional close of court business and turns it into a bright line: before it, today; after it, the next business day.
It governs the deemed service date, under the table in CPR 6.26, for the instantaneous methods: personal service, fax and email, and delivering or leaving a document at the relevant place. Post and DX are outside it, they use the second day after posting instead, and the claim form is outside it entirely, deemed served on the second business day after the serving step whatever the hour. Business day means any day except Saturday, Sunday, a bank holiday, Good Friday or Christmas Day.
Personal service at 2pm on Tuesday: deemed served Tuesday. An email transmitted at 5.15pm on Tuesday: deemed served Wednesday. Documents handed over at Saturday lunchtime: deemed served Monday, or Tuesday if Monday is a bank holiday. An application notice left at solicitors' offices at 4.45pm on the Thursday before Good Friday: deemed served the following Tuesday, four calendar days later than it feels.
Deadlines defined as clear days before hearings, notice periods, and response times all count from the deemed date, so a 4.31pm service can quietly convert compliant notice into short notice. The discipline on tight timetables is to work backwards: identify the deemed date the deadline requires, subtract the rule, and instruct service, personal service being the method most controllable to the hour, with time to spare. Tremark's same day servers routinely work to a before 4.30pm confirmation for precisely this reason, with the completion time recorded in the certificate of service.
Tremark's nationwide team of process servers completes most instructions at a fixed fee, with a certificate of service included as standard. Get an exact price for your instruction in under a minute.
Get an instant quote or find out more about our process serving servicesPrefer to put your question to a person? Send the team a message and we will come back to you promptly.
This page provides general information about the law and practice in England and Wales and is not legal advice. Rules change and individual circumstances vary; always take advice from a solicitor on your specific situation. Prices shown are indicative, exclusive of VAT and confirmed in writing before any work begins.