The Ministry of Justice courts and tribunal modernisation programme aims to introduce more IT and online services while closing existing magistrates’ courts and buildings.
However, the Justice Select Committee’s report on ‘Court and Tribunal Reforms’, published this week, warned that planned ‘deeper staffing cuts’ must not go ahead and expressed concern about delays, for example in processing divorce petitions.
Between 2010 and 2018, half of magistrates’ courts and more than a third of county courts closed, which has created ‘alarming difficulties’ for many court users, the committee found, forcing them to travel long distances on sometimes unreliable public transport and sometimes to spend up to 12 hours of their day doing so. Moreover, existing court buildings ‘are dilapidated and sometimes lack the basics, such as facilities for disabled users’.
The committee recommends that ‘pop-up courts’ in non-traditional buildings be established in every area where there has been a court closure in the past ten years. It wants all planned closures halted until the impact of previous closures has been reviewed.
While better use of IT is long overdue, the committee found that ‘poor digital skills, limited access to technology and low levels of literacy and legal knowledge’ raise barriers to digital services, and HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) ‘has not taken sufficient steps to address the needs of vulnerable users… face-to-face support is essential’. It recommends that the proposed ‘network of assisted digital online centres be extended to deliver comprehensive national coverage with walk-in access’ by April 2021.
Committee Chair Bob Neill MP said: ‘We understand and support the principle that modernisation is overdue. But we ask the government to pause for breath to make sure that everyone of us who needs the court system―to manage a divorce, to seek fair payment, or to get through family cases and criminal cases―must be able to get to court, to access justice, where and when they need to.’
National Chair of the Magistrates Association, John Bache JP said: ‘We share the concerns set out in this report about online pleas, holding remand hearings by video and how access to legal advice can be ensured when defendants are participating online or via video. These concerns must be addressed before these reforms are taken forward if the reform programme is not to compromise access to justice.
‘We strongly support the recommendation of this report that there should be no further court closures until the impact of previous closures has been assessed. Justice should, wherever possible, be administered locally and many courts are already worryingly remote from the communities that they serve. Video technology has a role to play but it is important that courts remain genuinely accessible to victims, witnesses and defendants, enabling them to attend in person.’
