20/01/2026

Serious irregularity affecting arbitration awards: pleading points and reliance on post-award decisions made by tribunals

On 15 December 2025, Mr Justice Trower, sitting in the Commercial Court, handed down a decision that should be of interest to anyone considering, or involved in, a challenge to an arbitration award under s.68 of the Arbitration Act 1996 on grounds of serious irregularity.

Rupert Hamilton appeared for the claimant, in Seacrest Group Ltd v BCPR Pte Ltd and Bangchak Corporation Public Company Ltd [2025] EWHC 3266 (Comm).

The case reflects a number of potentially important clarifications and developments of the law. First, in relation to the court’s ability to interpolate findings that do not appear on the face of an arbitration award. Second, in terms of an arbitral tribunal’s ability to unilaterally enforce its procedural orders without hearing from the parties. And third, in relation to the status of statements made by a tribunal outside of its award, and specifically when refusing a request to correct an award. The last of these may be of particular importance to any party contemplating making a request for correction or clarification of an award, especially if they anticipate potentially making a challenge to the award on the basis of serious irregularity.

Background and judgment

The UNCITRAL arbitration award in question had proceeded on the basis that it was common ground that the remuneration due to the claimant under the terms of the contract between the parties should be calculated on the basis of the average US dollar to Norwegian krone exchange rate over a 60-day period. The award made no mention of the fact that the claimant had, in its closing submissions, contended that the exchange rate on the final day of the 60-day period should be used instead; indeed, there was room for doubt as to whether the tribunal had even read the claimant’s closing submissions on the “exchange rate issue”.

Although the award was entirely silent on the exchange rate issue, the court found that the tribunal had regarded this as a new issue which was inconsistent with the claimant’s pleaded case and which the tribunal had thus chosen not to engage with (at [88]–[89]).

The court held that the tribunal had been entitled to take such an approach, without the respondents having raised any pleading point and without the tribunal having put the claimant on notice of any concern that the exchange rate issue was outside the scope of its pleaded case. Although the tribunal had specifically asked for the parties’ closing submissions to address the applicable USD/NOK exchange rate, the judge concluded that this had not been an invitation to make submissions on the exchange rate issue (at [85]–[86]). The judge found that the claimant should have realised that the tribunal might have regarded the exchange rate issue as a new issue, and that the onus had therefore been on the claimant to apply for permission to amend (at [90]).

The court also held that the tribunal’s decision to refuse to make any correction to its award had legal effect in its own right and that the reasons given by the tribunal for that refusal were admissible as evidence for the purpose of showing that, even if they had been guilty of a serious irregularity, this had not caused any serious injustice, because the tribunal would have rejected the claimant’s case on the exchange rate issue (at [92]–[97]).

Rupert Hamilton was instructed by Rob Jardine-Brown and Maria Oproglidou at Wikborg Rein LLP.