As of today, 1 October 2026, the Chancery Division of the High Court of England and Wales no longer exists under that name.
It has been replaced by the Business and Property Division under the Senior Courts (Transfer, Amendment and Consequential Provision) Order 2026 (SI 2026/723). The Judiciary confirmed the change took effect today. The new division sits alongside the King’s Bench Division and the Family Division.
What changed in substance:
• The Chancery Division was renamed the Business and Property Division. The Chancellor of the High Court became the President of the Business and Property Division.
• Specialist courts that had sat in the King’s Bench Division — including the Admiralty Court, the Commercial Court, the Circuit Commercial Court and the Technology and Construction Court — moved into the new division.
• The old Chancery lists continue inside it: Business, Insolvency and Companies, Property, Trusts and Probate, Intellectual Property (including the Patents Court and the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court), and the related specialist lists.
Existing Chancery judgments stay under the old neutral citation. New judgments from today are published as Business and Property Division decisions. The work itself has not disappeared; the divisional name and the grouping of the specialist courts have.
