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Enforcement: Squaring the circle

10 October 2025 / HHJ Karen Walden-Smith
Issue: 8134 / Categories: Features , Procedure & practice , Legal services
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Without enforcement, judgments are worthless. HHJ Karen Walden-Smith sets out the Civil Justice Council’s recommendations to improve effectiveness & efficiency
  • In March 2025, a working group from the Civil Justice Council published a report on the enforcement of judgments. This article discusses the work of the group and its findings.
  • The report highlights areas for reform, with 39 recommendations, including making enforcement more effective, better protecting the vulnerable, and creating a single unified digital enforcement court.

Enforcement can never be said to be at the racier end of civil litigation, and for far too long it has been overlooked as an area for consideration or reform. Since the 1980s, reforms—from Woolf and Jackson and the Briggs Civil Courts Structure Review 2016 to the HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) Reform programme—have aimed to make civil litigation more efficient. While enforcement was considered by Lord Briggs, he did not have the remit to deal with this issue in detail. The last major reforms were contained in the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement

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Judgments are ‘worthless without enforcement’, says HHJ Karen Walden-Smith, senior circuit judge and chair of the Civil Justice Council’s enforcement working group. In this week's NLJ, she breaks down the CJC’s April 2025 report, which identified systemic flaws and proposed 39 reforms, from modernising procedures to protecting vulnerable debtors
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In this week's NLJ, Dr Jon Robins, editor of The Justice Gap and lecturer at Brighton University, reports on a campaign to posthumously exonerate Christine Keeler. 60 years after her perjury conviction, Keeler’s son Seymour Platt has petitioned the king to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy, arguing she was a victim of violence and moral hypocrisy, not deceit. Supported by Felicity Gerry KC, the dossier brands the conviction 'the ultimate in slut-shaming'
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