The UK’s class action market continues to expand—even as filing volumes ebb—according to fresh figures that underscore the centrality of third-party funding to collective redress. A new CMS report pegs the value of pending UK class actions at nearly €155bn for 2024, with competition and consumer matters still driving the docket and Big Tech among the most frequent targets.

An article in The Global Legal Post notes that the UK is now the world’s second-largest litigation funding market and highlights several leading funders—Burford Capital, Bench Walk Advisers, Innsworth Capital and Fortress Investment Group—by activity and claim size. While the number of new European class actions declined year-over-year, the quantum concentrated in the UK continued to climb, split roughly evenly between opt-in and opt-out regimes. Sector concentration remains pronounced: energy and natural resources lead by value, followed closely by technology (including matters touching Apple and Google), with financial products and auto also well-represented.

The report’s authors attribute the UK’s outsized totals to a combination of procedural tools, claimant-side innovation and the expanding funding sector, even as defense-side voices question the methodology behind headline-grabbing member counts and valuations. For practitioners, the picture is a market maturing in structure and scale: funders allocating larger tickets to fewer, higher-confidence claims; law firms refining certification strategies; and defendants recalibrating settlement models to the realities of funded, high-quantum collective actions.

For funders, today’s snapshot reinforces two parallel truths: first, that capital demand remains robust despite reduced filings; second, that scrutiny is intensifying—from courts calibrating settlement fairness to policymakers reviewing collective redress frameworks. Expect portfolio construction to tilt further toward competition and consumer claims with clear distribution mechanics and scalable damages modeling, while defense-side pushback may spur greater transparency around economics and class outcomes.

The UK Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) has allowed Fair Civil Justice (FCJ) to intervene in the “Boundary Fares” collective action against Stagecoach South Western Trains—a case backed by Woodsford—squarely over who should receive any undistributed settlement funds. The class representative, Justin Gutmann, and funder Woodsford opposed the move, arguing FCJ’s stance risks cutting across the court-approved settlement framework and the interests of the class.

An article in CDR reports that FCJ now has permission to submit recommendations on distribution of unclaimed sums, a question that has taken on outsized importance amid slower-than-expected claims uptake. FCJ’s position emphasizes directing residual money away from claimant-side costs and toward consumer-benefiting destinations, including the Access to Justice Foundation or similar channels. The CAT’s permission gives the tribunal a counterpoint to submissions from the class representative, funder, ATE insurers and others, as it calibrates how to treat non-ringfenced amounts after the claims window closes.

Woodsford’s objection underscores the commercial stakes: the tribunal’s approach to residuals could inform how future CAT settlements structure non-ringfenced buckets, adverse costs protection, and any funder fees—particularly in cases where outreach yields limited direct compensation to class members.