# legal.court-deadline
Status: needs review by a litigation solicitor before it is published.
The date a period "of days" in the Civil Procedure Rules of England and Wales,
a practice direction or a court order leads to, computed by CPR 2.8:
- **Clear days (2.8(2), (3)).** The day the period begins is not counted, and
if the period ends by reference to an event, the day of the event is not
counted either.
- **Short periods (2.8(4)).** In a period of 5 days or less, a Saturday, a
Sunday, a bank holiday, Christmas Day or Good Friday does not count. The
holidays are England and Wales's, from dates.bank-holidays (which includes
Christmas Day and Good Friday); the CPR apply in England and Wales only.
- **Court office closed (2.8(5)).** When a period for doing an act **at the
court office** ends on a day the office is closed, the act is in time on the
next day it is open. Closed means a weekend, a bank holiday, or a day in
`courtClosedDays` (the office's own closures, which the caller knows).
Three shapes of rule, each one of the worked examples in CPR 2.8:
| rule | example | answer |
|---|---|---|
| `within` | particulars of claim within 14 days of service on 2 October | 16 October: the 14th day after |
| `at-least-after` | the hearing at least 28 days after notice given on 1 October | 30 October: 28 clear days between |
| `at-least-before` | notice served at least 3 days before a hearing on Friday 20 October | Monday 16 October |
| `at-least-before`, short | the same, hearing on Monday 20 October | Tuesday 14 October: the weekend does not count |
Every one of those is a vector (2023 for the Friday example, 2025 for the
Monday one).
**Literal reading.** For `at-least-before` and `at-least-after` the date
returned is the one next to the clear days, even if it is a weekend: three
clear days before a Thursday hearing are Monday to Wednesday, so the rule is
satisfied by acting on the Sunday before, and that is what comes back. Whether a
document served that day is deemed served then is a different rule (CPR 6.14,
6.26) and is not applied here. CPR 2.8(5) is applied only to `within` periods
and only when `atCourtOffice` is true: moving a "before" deadline later would
break the clear days it exists to protect, so asking for it is an error.
**Not handled.** Periods in months (CPR 2.10: calendar months; use
dates.add-months), periods expressed as a date or a time of day, deemed service
dates (CPR 6.14, 6.26), extensions by agreement (CPR 2.11, 3.8), and the
rules of other courts and tribunals. Short periods and court-office closures
need the bank holiday calendar for the years they touch; outside the years
dates.bank-holidays publishes, the call fails rather than guessing.
## Source
Civil Procedure Rules, Part 2, rule 2.8 "Time", Ministry of Justice,
https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part02, read on
23 September 2026, including all four worked examples. Bank holidays: gov.uk,
via dates.bank-holidays.
## Before you rely on this
**Not professional advice.** This capability calculates legal figures from published rules. It is a software component for developers, not legal advice. Rules change and every rate here has an effective date. Check that the dates cover your case. Verify results against the official sources listed above, and have a litigation solicitor review how you use it, before anyone relies on the output. Provided "as is" under its licence, without warranty.
**Unreviewed.** This capability's implementations agree in every language and pass its published test vectors, which were worked out from the official sources cited. But no qualified litigation solicitor has yet checked those vectors, or confirmed that the capability covers the cases it claims. Treat it as a draft. Do not use it for real people, money or decisions without your own expert review. Once a qualified reviewer signs off, this notice is replaced with their name, qualification and the date. Each new version needs fresh sign-off.
1.0.1 marks it unreviewed. The code and the tests are unchanged.