Administration of justice

HMCTS answers your questions about courts and tribunals reform

Susan Acland-Hood answers legal professionals' most frequently asked questions about courts and tribunals reform.

About the author
Susan Acland-Hood is chief executive of HMCTS.

Our May roadshow gave legal professionals another chance to hear about our £1bn courts and tribunals reform programme, to ask questions and give views. For the first time, we livestreamed the event on YouTube, and invited questions via an app, giving more people the chance to be involved across the country even if they could not be in the room with us. Here are some of the discussion points from the night.

What consideration has been given to the role of independent legal advice in the online justice system?

While it should not be necessary to have a lawyer simply to be able to navigate the legal process, I absolutely believe that – as with paper systems – litigants should be steered towards and encouraged to seek legal advice on legal matters, where this is appropriate.

For several online systems (civil money claims and probate, for example) we are designing versions specifically for professional use. The publicly available online civil money claims service is intended for litigants in person making small claims, but there will be a counterpart system for law firms that want to manage several claims on behalf of a client under a single dashboard. We can always, of course, do more – and hundreds of legal professionals are supporting development of our online services to make sure that we get this right.

How can you make decisions about the future of court buildings before it is clear how the online court will work?

We inherited the court estate from a number of predecessor organisations: magistrates’ court committees; The Tribunals Service; and HM Courts Service. When you put that together, the pattern of buildings is not something that you would intentionally design. Some buildings are cheek by jowl with another; about 41% of courts and tribunals were used for less than half their available hearing capacity during the financial year 2016/17; and decisions have to be taken to close decaying court buildings that are not fit for purpose. Given this, I just do not think it would be right to decide that the current pattern of courts should be the pattern forever, especially as keeping underused courts running means money being spent which could be better used.

All court closures, so far, have been based on whether their capacity was needed, taking into account current workloads (and also looking at geography, travelling distance, and where work would be moved to). We have not closed any courts based on assumptions about new digital systems.

Looking forward, though, we have recently consulted on the principles that should be used to make decisions on future closures. That consultation asked questions about how we should take into account future digital developments, and proposed that any future court closures depending on digital change should happen stage by stage, as evidence shows the capacity is not needed. We are looking carefully at the responses to the consultation, and will publish the final proposals on our forwardlooking principles later this year.

Many are concerned about our most vulnerable court users. How will you understand and address their needs?

We have a dedicated workstream focused on trying to make sure that systems are not just accessible by design, but that we think carefully about the most vulnerable.

First, we need to be careful not to inadvertently introduce new or additional challenges that make accessing the justice system more diÿcult than it is already. Some of the answer is that existing routes to accessing justice will remain open. We are not about to shut down paper systems; however, we need to do more. Lots of the most vulnerable in society are already disadvantaged by the current system, and making sure that the new system is no worse does not go far enough. We need to ensure that a reformed courts and tribunals service is better.

Second, we are building up our Assisted Digital support service to provide support and guidance about using new online systems (though categorically not to provide legal advice). We will be able to provide reassurance to those who are less confident online - for whatever reason - over the telephone, through webchat or face to face at a community venue run by our partner charity, The Good Things Foundation.

Third, we are engaging with a range of public court user groups to ensure that those who find it diÿcult to make their voice heard are represented. There is more we can do, and we will continue to listen and learn.

What research is being done around full video hearings and the impact of evidence given by video?

Will it be the default position for some kinds of hearings to be virtual or fully video? Video technology has, of course, been used routinely in our courts for two decades, enabling defendants and witnesses in the criminal system to plead or give evidence via remote link, saving time and cost, and protecting often vulnerable people. Full video hearings take this one step further by enabling proceedings to take place with all relevant parties appearing over video rather than in person in a physical courtroom.

Over the last few months, we have been working with members of the judiciary, legal professionals and the public to test how full video hearings work in a real-life setting. This pilot in the tax tribunal will be completed by the summer, and is being independently evaluated by academics from the London School of Economics. We will share the results of the evaluation.

We will also be looking at international examples and evidence. In Australia, for example, an academic study of a series of mock trials undertaken by the New South Wales Department of Justice found that jurors were influenced by a range of factors, but were no more likely to find a defendant guilty if they appeared via video link than if they were physically present.

Our view is that full video hearings will be more suitable for some kinds of hearings than others. We think they may be particularly suitable for case management and progression hearings involving just judges and legal professionals. Conversely, we would not expect to carry out any full Crown Court trials by video.

Judicial discretion is at the heart of this. It is for the judge to conduct the hearing, and to ensure the interests of justice are served in so doing. A series of scenarios and frameworks will be developed by the senior judiciary to guide judges in deciding whether or not a video hearing is suitable, and any use of full video hearings will also ensure that justice remains at least as open as it is now.

We welcome reform and digital processes, but we need to be able to speak to humans too. How can you improve communications for court users?

In too many courts, telephones are not answered reliably and public and professional court users find it hard to get through. This is partly because, in a small court, staff are covering phones as well as doing other things, and partly because our old telephone system does not support the kind of things you would usually expect (like making it easy for staff to tell how many people are waiting in a queue, which lets you put more people onto the phones).

So, we are changing the way we work to ensure that we provide a better and more eÿcient service. We started with calls from many county courts, by moving them to be answered more professionally in a dedicated centre; and, last year, we did the same with calls to London magistrates’ courts. Before the move, we estimate that over 50% of calls made to London magistrates’ courts were going unanswered; we now answer over 90% of calls within one minute, and deal with queries quickly, knowledgably and professionally.

The same principle lies behind our plans to establish national Courts and Tribunals Service Centres. The first two will start their work next year, and will provide a national online and telephone service to help court users, both public and professional, as well as doing the administrative work that takes cases forward in a consistent and efficient way. Having larger centres will mean that we can work more efficiently and respond better when volumes of work fluctuate, avoiding backlogs, delays and errors.

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