General

1. The calculator was prepared by Matthew White, barrister, St John’s Chambers, Bristol.

2. It enables calculation of the cumulative special account rate (“SAR”) over periods from 1/2/02 to date.

3. It is shared to assist others who need to calculate interest on special damages based on the special account rate (full rate or half rate). It is intended only for the use of those who know the situations in which the SAR (full rate or half rate) should be used. If you are in doubt, ask a lawyer. If you are in doubt and you are a lawyer, look it up or ask a colleague.

4. This calculator was last updated following the change in Special Account Rate (SAR) indicated on the calculation page. It is the author’s intention to keep it up to date, but it is very likely that there will be a lag between the change of rate and the updating of this website. NOTE WELL that any changes to the SAR after the date shown on the calculation page have not been included in the calculation, that calculation assuming that the rate will remain the same in future (and that assumption will be wrong at some point: the rate is bound to change).

5. The special account rates and dates of change used in the calculation have been provided by the Court Funds Office.

6. The author has attempted to ensure that the calculator provides accurate results, and uses it himself. However, no liability can be accepted for any errors. It is used entirely at the user’s own risk.

7. This calculator is copyrighted to the author, but is free for all to use.

8. If the calculator appears to be misbehaving, please contact Matthew White at St John’s Chambers via [email protected]

Mathematical

9. There are 365 days per year for 3 years in 4, but every 4th year has 366 days in it. The Court Funds Office pays daily interest on the basis of 1/365 in normal years and 1/366 in leap years. That is plainly mathematically correct. It is assumed that the court will also want the calculation to be correct, so allowance for leap years has been made in the calculator.

10. That created a choice: do the calculation on a year-by-year basis with an assumed average of 365.25 days/ year, or make more precise allowance for leap years. The more precise approach was chosen.

11. The “show your working” option enables you to see and check the calculation that has been made. A sensible number of decimal places has been shown, but more decimal places are used in the background calculation. If you want to do a thorough check of the calculation, you need to use both the “Calculation” table and the “Source Data” table. For each row in the Calculation table, the period is shown in years. Apply the rate in that period from the Source Data table to the period in years and you will get close to the “interest in range” figure shown in the Calculation table, the small difference being because more decimal places are used in the calculation than are shown.