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The Technology and Construction Court Guide, Fourth Edition 2026, adds a section on the use of artificial intelligence at paragraphs 1.6.1 to 1.6.5
A court guide is not a Practice Direction and not a rule of the Civil Procedure Rules. But the High Court list that hears software and systems disputes has now written AI verification duties into its own procedural text, and paragraph 1.1.2 attaches a costs hook to non-compliance with the Guide.
Bottom line: A court guide, not a Practice Direction and not a CPR rule. Paragraph 1.1.1 says the Guide does not substitute or override the CPR or the relevant Practice Directions, and that it should be adopted flexibly. Its force runs through expectation and the costs discretion at paragraph 1.1.2, not through a free-standing rule.
Who this affects: Solicitors and counsel conducting TCC claims, in London and at the Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle centres. In-house counsel at contractors, developers, systems integrators and software suppliers. Expert witnesses instructed in TCC matters.
Issue date: Published 1 July 2026 per the judiciary.uk announcement page. The document is titled Fourth Edition 2026 and carries Crown copyright 2026. The previous edition was October 2022. No compliance deadline is set; the Guide governs conduct in the list from publication.
What changed: Section 1 (Introduction) now carries section 1.6, The Use of Artificial Intelligence, at paragraphs 1.6.1 to 1.6.5. Four substantive paragraphs plus a cross-reference. This is new text; the 2022 edition had no AI section.
Analysis: The TCC is the list whose declared jurisdiction includes claims relating to the design, supply and installation of computer systems and computer software. So the court most likely to try an AI procurement or AI performance dispute has now put AI verification duties in its own procedural text before it has had to decide one.
Primary sources: Announcement: TCC Guide 2026 (judiciary.uk) · Guide PDF: TCC Guide, Fourth Edition 2026
- Instrument (EN)
- The Technology and Construction Court Guide, Fourth Edition 2026
- Relevant provisions
- Section 1.6, paragraphs 1.6.1 to 1.6.5; sanctions hook at paragraph 1.1.2
- Authority
- The Technology and Construction Court, King's Bench Division, High Court of Justice of England and Wales. Published with the approval of the President of King's Bench Division (para 1.1.5)
- Jurisdiction
- England and Wales, TCC claims only (High Court and County Court TCC lists)
- Status
- In force as the current edition; supersedes the October 2022 edition
- Bindingness
- Court guide. Not a CPR rule and not a Practice Direction. Para 1.1.1: the Guide does not substitute or override the CPR or the relevant Practice Directions
- Sanction available
- Para 1.1.2: if parties act unreasonably or fail to comply, the Court may impose sanctions including orders for costs
- Issue date / next deadline
- 1 July 2026. No deadline stated. The Guide says it will be kept under review with amendments from time to time (para 1.1.7)
- Primary source
- https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/46.20_JO_Technology_and_Construction_Court_Guide_2026_WEB.pdf
Why we are covering a July instrument in August
This is not news. The TCC Guide 2026 was published on 1 July 2026 and the announcement page says so in its opening line. We are covering it now because it is uncovered: the AI section sits five paragraphs into the introduction of a 1.27 MB PDF about construction and engineering procedure, and it did not travel.
Our own notes carried the section number two different ways, as 1.6 and as 16. We resolved it from the document. The contents list at page 9 of the Guide reads 1.6 The Use of Artificial Intelligence, and the body text at that page carries paragraphs 1.6.1 through 1.6.5. There is no section 16 in this Guide; Section 16 in the sectional numbering is a different topic entirely. If you are looking it up, go to Section 1, Introduction, paragraph 1.6.
What the four operative paragraphs actually say
Paragraph 1.6.1 permits AI and locates responsibility on the human: "All legal representatives are personally responsible for the material they put before the Court and have a professional obligation to ensure that it is accurate and appropriate. Provided that representative are mindful of that responsibility and of their professional obligations, Artificial Intelligence ("AI") can be used." The grammatical slip in the second sentence is in the published text and we have reproduced it verbatim.
Paragraph 1.6.2 handles disclosure. "Whether and to what extent legal representatives should disclose their use of AI will depend on the context. However, any doubt as to whether the fact that AI has been used should be mentioned must be resolved in favour of disclosing such use." Read the two sentences together before you build a policy on them. The first makes disclosure contextual. The second is the only mandatory verb in the paragraph, and what it makes mandatory is the direction in which you resolve doubt, not disclosure itself.
Paragraph 1.6.3 covers data: "Legal representatives must at all times uphold the confidentiality of and protect the privacy of any underlying data in relation to which Artificial Intelligence is used." Paragraph 1.6.4 is the verification duty, and it has two limbs: "Legal representatives must independently verify the accuracy of any research or case citations that have been generated with the assistance of AI and must be in a position to confirm that they have done so."
The second limb of 1.6.4 is the one to plan around. It is an evidential posture requirement. Being able to confirm to the court that you verified is a different thing from having verified, and it implies a record that survives to the hearing.
Paragraph 1.6.5 is a cross-reference only. It points readers to Artificial Intelligence (AI): Guidance for Judicial Office Holders dated 31 October 2025 for further guidance. That is the whole of section 1.6. All four duties in the reported version of this story appear in the text; we found nothing in section 1.6 that we could not match.
Mandatory disclosure, or a tie-break rule
The distinction matters enough to state precisely, because it is easy to summarise wrongly in either direction.
The Guide does not require you to disclose AI use in every filing. Paragraph 1.6.2 opens by saying that whether and to what extent you should disclose depends on the context. What the paragraph does is remove your discretion at the point of uncertainty. If you are unsure whether the fact of AI use should be mentioned, the Guide says that doubt must be resolved in favour of disclosing.
In practical terms it is a tie-break rule with the tie broken one way. A firm that treats it as a blanket disclosure obligation is over-reading the paragraph. A firm that treats it as purely discretionary is under-reading it, because the moment the question is genuinely arguable the Guide has already answered it.
The costs hook, and what a court guide can and cannot do
The AI section has no sanction of its own. The sanction lives in the Purpose of Guide section, at paragraph 1.1.2, which reads: "The TCC Guide is designed to ensure effective management of proceedings in the TCC. The parties, their solicitors and counsel are expected to co-operate, and to follow both the letter and spirit of the Guide. If parties act unreasonably or fail to comply with these requirements, the Court may impose sanctions including orders for costs." We character-matched that against the PDF and confirmed the paragraph number.
Note the modal. The Court may impose sanctions. Nothing in 1.1.2 provides for anything beyond that, and we are not asserting any further consequence from this instrument. Wasted costs jurisdiction, contempt and regulatory referral exist elsewhere in English law and are not created or expanded by this Guide.
This is also where the instrument type does real work. A court guide is not a Practice Direction and not a rule of the CPR. Paragraph 1.1.1 says the Guide does not substitute or override the CPR or the relevant Practice Directions, and that it should be seen as guidance to be adopted flexibly and adapted as appropriate to the particular case. Paragraph 1.1.5 records that it is published with the approval of the President of King's Bench Division and prepared in consultation with the TCC judges and with TECBAR, TeCSA, the Society for Construction Law and the Society for Computers and Law.
So the mechanism is not a rule breach. It is that a judge exercising a case management and costs discretion now has a written statement of what the court expects on AI use, in the court's own published text, which counsel are expected to be familiar with. That is weaker than a Practice Direction in form. It is not obviously weaker in effect at the costs stage. That reading is our inference from the structure of paragraphs 1.1.1, 1.1.2 and 1.6, not a statement by the court.
Why this list, and not another one
The TCC's declared subject matter is set out at paragraph 1.3.1, and the list is worth reading if you sell or buy software. It includes, at item (g), claims relating to the design, supply and installation of computer systems, computer software and related network systems, including BIM systems. It also covers energy disputes, public procurement claims under the Procurement Act 2023, and claims against engineers, architects, surveyors and other specialised advisers relating to the services they provide.
Put those two things next to each other. The English court list whose jurisdiction expressly covers failed computer systems and software supply is the same list that has just written AI verification duties into its own procedural guidance. A dispute about whether a deployed AI system performed as contracted is a technology supply dispute, and this is where such a claim would sit.
One limit worth stating, because it constrains how far you can carry the analogy. Section 1.6 addresses AI used by legal representatives in the conduct of litigation. It is not a standard for AI systems in evidence, and it is not a case management regime for disputes about AI products. We searched the full text of the Guide for AI and artificial intelligence: outside section 1.6 there are no other occurrences, including in the sections on expert evidence and disclosure. Anyone expecting a TCC protocol for expert evidence about model behaviour will not find it in this edition.
This is not the October 2025 judicial guidance
Two English AI documents are being blurred together in commentary and they point in opposite directions.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): Guidance for Judicial Office Holders, dated 31 October 2025, is guidance to judges. It addresses how judicial office holders and their staff should approach AI tools in their own work. We have covered it separately. It does not impose duties on parties or their representatives.
TCC Guide section 1.6 runs the other way. Every duty in it is addressed to legal representatives appearing in the TCC. The two documents are linked, in that paragraph 1.6.5 sends readers to the October 2025 guidance for further reading, but the direction of obligation is different and they should not be cited interchangeably.
One further boundary. This Guide governs TCC claims. It says nothing about practice in the Commercial Court, the Chancery Division, the County Court outside the TCC lists, or any tribunal, and we make no claim that it binds them. Paragraph 1.1.6 notes that work has been done to align this Guide with the Commercial Court Guide and the Chancery Guide where practices should be substantially the same, which is a statement about drafting alignment, not about the reach of this text.
What we did not verify
What we opened: the judiciary.uk announcement page for the TCC Guide 2026, which states that the Guide has been published today (1 July 2026); and the full Guide PDF at judiciary.uk, from which we extracted the complete text and read the contents list, section 1.1, section 1.3.1 and section 1.6 in the body. Every quotation in this piece was character-matched against that extracted text. The section number dispute in our notes was resolved from the document: it is 1.6, paragraphs 1.6.1 to 1.6.5.
What we did not open: the October 2022 third edition, so our statement that the AI section is new rests on the judiciary.uk announcement, which says the Guide now addresses the use of Artificial Intelligence, and not on a diff of the two editions. We did not open the October 2025 judicial guidance for this piece, the consultation responses from TECBAR or TeCSA, CPR Part 60 or its Practice Direction, or any judgment applying paragraph 1.6.
What we refuse to claim: that section 1.6 binds any court outside the TCC; that any sanction beyond what paragraph 1.1.2 provides is available for breach of it; that disclosure of AI use is mandatory in all cases, which paragraph 1.6.2 does not say; that section 1.6 governs AI evidence or AI product disputes rather than the conduct of representatives; or that any court has yet applied it. We have found no reported decision under paragraph 1.6 and did not search for one systematically. Our reading of how a costs discretion may absorb the Guide is marked in the text as inference and is not the court speaking.
If your firm runs TCC work, the deliverable is a verification record, not a policy statement. Paragraph 1.6.4 requires legal representatives to independently verify AI-assisted research and citations and to be in a position to confirm that they have done so, which means the check has to leave a trace that is still retrievable at the hearing. Treat paragraph 1.6.2 as a tie-break rather than a blanket disclosure duty: disclosure depends on context, but genuine doubt is resolved in favour of disclosing. The exposure sits at paragraph 1.1.2, where the Court may impose sanctions including orders for costs.
Source File
Open the Guide PDF at judiciary.uk and go to the contents list, where section 1.6, The Use of Artificial Intelligence, is listed at page 9. Turn to that page and confirm paragraphs 1.6.1 to 1.6.5 read as quoted here. Then go back to page 1 for paragraph 1.1.2 and confirm the sanctions sentence. Confirm the 1 July 2026 date on the judiciary.uk announcement page, and confirm the edition line, Fourth Edition 2026, on the PDF cover.
Legal representatives must independently verify the accuracy of any research or case citations that have been generated with the assistance of AI and must be in a position to confirm that they have done so. - The Technology and Construction Court Guide, Fourth Edition 2026, para 1.6.4, published 1 July 2026
FAQ
Is the AI section at 1.6 or at section 16?
It is 1.6. The Guide's contents list shows 1.6 The Use of Artificial Intelligence at page 9, within Section 1 (Introduction), and the body text at that page runs from paragraph 1.6.1 to paragraph 1.6.5. There is no AI section at Section 16.
Do I have to tell the TCC that I used AI?
Not in every case. Paragraph 1.6.2 says whether and to what extent legal representatives should disclose their use of AI will depend on the context. What is mandatory is the tie-break: any doubt as to whether the fact of AI use should be mentioned must be resolved in favour of disclosing it.
What can the court actually do if a representative ignores section 1.6?
Paragraph 1.1.2 is the hook. Parties, their solicitors and counsel are expected to follow both the letter and spirit of the Guide, and if they act unreasonably or fail to comply the Court may impose sanctions including orders for costs. The Guide provides for nothing beyond that. Other jurisdictions of the English courts, such as wasted costs or contempt, exist independently and are not created by this Guide.
Is this the same as the judicial AI guidance from October 2025?
No. Artificial Intelligence (AI): Guidance for Judicial Office Holders, dated 31 October 2025, is addressed to judges and their staff. TCC Guide section 1.6 is addressed to legal representatives appearing in the TCC. Paragraph 1.6.5 cross-refers to the October 2025 document for further guidance, but the two impose duties on different people.
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