Administration of justice

HMCTS: ‘working together with others’

Rob Hack describes how HM Courts and Tribunals Service is involving other people, including CILEx members, in the development and delivery of its reform programme.

About the author: Rob Hack is head of external stakeholder communications at HMCTS.

Over the past 12 months, we have put a lot of focus onto increasing our engagement activity at HMCTS, providing greater visibility and more opportunities for people, including CILEx members, to contribute to and shape our reform programme. Whilst I acknowledge that there is more to do, I hope this is starting to be felt.

HMCTS is born out of a partnership between the government and the independent judiciary, and everything that we do is accountable to both. More broadly, we work extensively with professional and public court users - and those that represent them - to ensure that we put the people who use our services at the heart of the way we design them.

We have not launched a single, reformed service that has not involved the people who will be using it or their representatives. For example, before our divorce service went live, over 1,000 people tested it on real cases and gave us feedback that shaped the final design.

We have also carried out over 4,000 research interviews since the programme started in 2016. This helps us to design and test new approaches, as well as understand different experiences of using our services before, during and after those services have been reformed. And we also work closely with a number of charities, including Revolving Doors, to understand what people who may find it more diÿcult – reform or no reform – to access the justice system need.

What is engagement?

Engagement can mean different things for different people at different times. Its nature will change through the lifespan of a particular project or programme. Our engagement falls into three broad categories:

We communicate regular information and updates, for example through our events programme or newsletter.

Through dialogue at various engagement groups, a number of legal professional and public user representatives, including those from CILEx, are able to exchange ideas, insight knowledge and expertise, that might otherwise be missed with a single view of change.

Finally, we collaborate with frontline users, giving them the opportunity to test and feedback on new services very early in their design. This includes inviting stakeholders with particular expertise and experience to work with our project teams as part of the ‘agile’ development process.

Running consultations

We had a full, public consultation right at the start of the programme, which set out the government’s broad approach to reform. It is important to remember, though, that formal consultations are just one type of engagement, and they are undertaken in specific circumstances.

We want to understand as fully as possible the impact our proposals will have on court users. So, for example, we always consult when we are moving court work out of the local area because we know that this will have an impact on the journeys users take to court. On the other hand, if proposals have a limited impact – for example, merging two courts in the same town – a formal consultation would be bureaucratic and unnecessary.

One of the big challenges we face is that we often need to speak to the same groups of people about lots of different aspects of the reform programme. We know this can be frustrating and resource-intensive for them, and we are doing our best to co-ordinate this better and strike the right balance.

Who HMCTS is working with

Each of our reform projects works with stakeholders relevant to them. This might involve a combination of private firms of solicitors to test a service for legal professionals, such as online probate, or a local authority to design our new public law processes and systems. We also work with charities, such as Victim Support or Rape Crisis, to help us understand, for example, the experiences of victims and witnesses. And, of course, with other government departments such as the Department for Work and Pensions.

Last year, more than 100,000 people used our digital services – although using ‘live’ services, testing and feedback from real users continues to inform how they develop. We also meet routinely with representatives of different stakeholder groups, ie, legal professionals, charities representing public court users, the media, criminal justice partners and so on, to share our plans and listen to feedback. CILEx plays a prominent and crucial role in much of this engagement.

Keeping you up to date

We need to continue improving how we make all our stakeholders aware of the way that we work with others. We have not always done this consistently. It is not that we have not engaged with people, but it is true to say that we could co-ordinate and report it back better.

In November last year, and in response to the Public Accounts Committee, we set out our approach to engaging with external stakeholders. Lots of what we said we would do is already underway. But we know that we have more to do, particularly around explaining to the wider stakeholder community - and the thousands of people who have not been directly involved - how we have taken into account the feedback of their peers or representatives.

To keep up to date with our engagement opportunities, I would encourage CILEx members to follow HMCTS on Twitter and sign up to our events and newsletters and visit our blog (see box).

HMCTS updates


Pre-Application Judicial Education Programme: progress update and next steps Welsh law and policy update: recent developments Conveyancing and practice review Will preparation in modern society Law Commission: reforming RTM, commonhold and enfranchisement: Part 2 Legal aid at 70: built to last or on its last legs?