Arbitral Award

Domestic enforcement of an arbitral award is dealt with by section 66 of the Arbitration Act 1996. An award made by a tribunal pursuant to an arbitration agreement may, with the leave (permission) of the court, be enforced "in the same manner as a judgment or order of the court to the same effect", and where leave is given, judgment can be entered in the terms of the award. This gives an award the practical force of a court judgment for enforcement purposes — for example allowing bailiffs or enforcement officers to be used against the losing party's assets — without the winning party having to bring a fresh claim on the substance of the dispute. Leave to enforce will be refused, however, to the extent that the person resisting enforcement shows the tribunal lacked substantive jurisdiction to make the award, though that objection can be lost if not raised at the right procedural stage.

Cross-border enforcement is separately addressed by Part III of the Arbitration Act 1996, which implements the New York Convention 1958 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Section 100 defines a "New York Convention award" as one made, under an arbitration agreement, in the territory of a state (other than the UK) that is itself a party to the Convention — defined in the Act as "the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards adopted by the United Nations Conference on International Commercial Arbitration on 10th June 1958". This is what allows an award made by a tribunal seated in, say, Paris or Singapore to be recognised and enforced by the English courts in largely the same way as a domestic award, provided the arbitration agreement was in writing and the seat state is a Convention party. Section 66 makes clear that its domestic enforcement route sits alongside, and does not displace, enforcement under the New York Convention provisions or by a separate action on the award.