Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has sharply criticised HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) for its slow progress in delivering reforms including the implementation of the digital Common Platform.
The committee has published a report on the issue, highlighting a series of resets, revisions and delays to the Court Reform Programme, saying it has largely been due to HMCTS consistently underestimating its scale and complexity.
This comes months after a similarly critical report on the programme by the National Audit Office, which also highlighted persistent problems with the Common Platform.
The PAC report says multiple technical and design problems throughout the roll out of the case management system have created problems for court staff as they try to reduce the large case backlogs caused by the pandemic. This is attributed partly to a failure by HMCTS to engage with court users – a problem that has not been resolved, according to the PAC.
Timetable extensions
Work on the platform began in 2012, but the timetable has been extended three times and the delivery is now expected to be complete in March 2025. By December 2022 HMCTS had spent £1.1. billion of it £1.3 billion budget for the programme.
The report adds that the service’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.
It also warns that HMCTS risks undermining public confidence in the fairness of the justice system if it does not take swift action on assessments it made in November 2022 on access to justice. These identified concerning disparities in how divorce and probate services perform for different groups, such as ethnic minorities – but HMCTS has not yet acted on these findings.
The PAC has made a number of recommendations, including that HMCTS should set out the costs not included in its most recent business case, including those for the development of the Common Platform interfaces; and that it should say how it intends to obtain regular feedback from users.
Threat to timely justice
Dame Meg Hillier MP, chair of the committee, said: “Our courts were already stretched thin before the pandemic, and the backlogs now faced pose a real threat to timely access to justice.
“These are services crying out for critical reform, but frustratingly HM Courts and Tribunal’s attempts appear in some cases to be actively hindering its own staff’s ability to carry out their jobs. In particular, the roll out of the Common Platform digital system was a blow upon a bruise for pressured court users.
“We would expect HMCTS to appreciate by now that complex reform such as this cannot be properly implemented while failing to engage with those impacted, but our report paints a picture of a service now rushing to introduce its plans following multiple delays. HMCTS has now burnt through almost its entire budget for a programme of reform only a little over halfway complete.
“The Government told us that the complexity of managing some of these reforms was like ‘redesigning the jet engine while it is in flight’. It must explain how it intends to land the plane.”
