04/07/2023
Police Oracle
Overall, the programme will deliver less than previously promised, with work on some services paused altogether
Last week the powerful House of Commons Public Accounts Committee published a very critical report on the government’s court reform programme. The summary could hardly be more damning:
“Seven years into the programme, HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) is once again behind on delivering critical reforms to its services. Overall, despite an increase in budget, the programme is set to deliver less than originally planned, at a time when the reforms are even more vital to help reduce extensive court backlogs.”
The reform programme
In 2016, HMCTS launched an ambitious portfolio of reforms which it later consolidated into the courts and tribunals reform programme. Through its reforms, HMCTS aims to modernise the courts and tribunals system by introducing new working practices and moving inefficient paper-based services online, while also improving access to justice for users of its services, including vulnerable groups. Overall, the reforms are expected to reduce operating costs within the criminal justice system.
The programme comprises 44 projects across five workstreams: criminal courts (crime); civil and family courts and tribunals (civil, family and tribunals); the court and tribunal estate (property) and two workstreams for cross-cutting projects such as video hearing technology. The projects cover a wide range of services, some of which the public can access directly, such as new online portals for probate and divorce applications. HMCTS is also rolling out a new digital case management system for criminal courts called common platform, to address inefficiencies such as paper-based working. Common platform is intended to allow access to all parties involved in a case including the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Delays
HMCTS originally planned to deliver the programme within four years but is now seven years into the programme. When the Committee last reported on the programme in 2019, HMCTS had extended its timetable twice and expected to complete the programme by December 2023. It is perhaps not surprising that HMCTS did not meet this revised deadline given the impact of the global pandemic.
In March 2023, following increased delivery risk, HMCTS decided to reset its programme and extend its timetable for the third time. It now plans to deliver most of its projects by March 2024, three months later than planned, and expects to complete delivery of common platform, in March 2025, over a year later than planned.
Spending
By December 2022, HMCTS had spent £1.1 billion of its £1.3 billion budget for the programme. However, as at December 2022, it only had £120 million of funding left to deliver the rest of the programme as HMCTS was not able to retain unspent funding from previous years. HMCTS expects the reforms to provide £220 million in yearly savings from 2025–26, with a total of £2 billion in lifetime savings, although this does not reflect the impact of its recent reset of the programme.
Overall, the programme will deliver less than previously promised, with work on some services paused altogether and expected savings at least £310 million lower than the £2.3 billion forecast in 2019.
Conclusions
The Committee is not impressed with HMCTS implementation of the reform programme, saying that its approach to implementing the common platform has remained detached from the needs of those who use the courts system. It gives the example of court staff such as legal advisers, having to deal with common platform technical and functionality issues in an already stressful court environment. Social media often lights up with complaints from lawyers about the latest outage and victims’ groups feel that the design of common platform has ignored their concerns and the opportunity to make it possible (for the first time) to track how and why so many victims drop out of the justice process.
The Committee concludes that HMCTS has not done enough to listen and respond to users’ concerns, leaving staff and courts to suffer the consequences.
It also says that HMCTS’s lack of data and research means that it has a limited understanding of whether reformed services are delivering the expected benefits, the total cost of its reforms to the taxpayer, or the impact on other services. The Committee clearly expresses a degree of scepticism over whether the promised savings will materialise.
There is clearly an urgent need for HMCTS to expedite its implementation of an effective new digital court system with last week’s figures on the stubbornly high court backlogs showing there were 62,235 outstanding Crown Court cases on 31 March this year, a reduction of just 276 on the previous quarter and almost 20,00 more than three years ago.