CEDR Audit 2021 | A survey of commercial mediator attitudes and experience in the United Kingdom.
This marks the ninth occasion on which CEDR (The Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution) has undertaken a survey of the attitudes of civil and commercial mediators to a range of issues concerning their personal background, mediation practice and experience, professional standards and regulation, and priorities for the field over the coming years. The primary focus of the survey is to assess how the market and mediation attitudes have changed over the past two years.
In addition, the Audit has sought mediators’ views and experience on two particularly topical issues this year, namely the emergence of online mediation in the light of the covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing debate about diversity and inclusion in society as a whole.
The survey was undertaken using an internet-based questionnaire, which was open to all mediators in the United Kingdom, regardless of organisational affiliation. It was publicised by way of CEDR’s website and direct e-mail to the mediator contacts both of CEDR and of other leading service providers and members of the Civil Mediation Council.
This particular report is based upon the 361 responses that were received from mediators based in the United.
Kingdom. This is a statistically significant sample that represents about 50% of the individual membership of the Civil Mediation Council. As in any survey, not all participants answered every question.
Alongside our survey of mediator attitudes, we conducted a parallel survey of lawyer attitudes in order to provide a user-oriented perspective to some of the questions raised.
It is important to emphasise that this is a survey of the civil and commercial mediation landscape, a field we have very loosely defined as encompassing any and all mediation activity that might reasonably fall within the ambit of the Civil Mediation Council. This reflects the background of the surveying organisation, CEDR, and the channels through which survey responses were canvassed.
We do not, therefore, claim to cover either community or family mediation (although some of our respondents do report also being active in those fields).
Furthermore, we do not include the statutory ACAS service or the HMCS Small Claims Mediation Service, quite simply because the scale of their activities would each far outweigh the other findings of this survey.
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The Audit was undertaken by CEDR and They have given permission for it to be uploaded on this website.