County Courts: Greater London

(asked on 20th September 2022) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Justice Committee's Sixth Report of Session 2021–22 entitled Court Capacity, HC 69, published on 27 April 2022, whether his Department is taking steps to implement the recommendations on (a) the transparency of timeliness and (b) providing resources to increase the (i) judicial, (ii) physical, (iii) digital and (iv) staffing capacity of (A) Wandsworth County Court, (B) Kingston County Court and (C) other courts in the south west of London.


Answered by
Gareth Johnson Portrait
Gareth Johnson
This question was answered on 23rd September 2022

The Government responded to the Justice Select Committee’s report on Court Capacity in July 2022. As set out in the response, the civil courts play a crucial role in ensuring citizens have access to justice and in supporting the economy. We took swift action in response to the pandemic, including introducing Covid-secure courtrooms and remote hearings, and despite the impact of the pandemic our timeliness figures in civil courts remained stable over 2021. However, we are working to improve timeliness, across all tracks for those claims that progress to a hearing.

HMCTS’ data strategy, published in December 2021, sets out HMCTS’ strategy to gather, hold, curate, and protect the data we need and to open and share data safely to support transparency.

The Government has invested £1.3bn to transform the justice system, introducing 21st Century technology and online services to increase access to justice, improve efficiency and modernise the courts. The digital reforms and simplified services are removing simple cases from court, cutting down unnecessary paperwork and helping some of the most vulnerable people facing difficult situations get justice as quickly as possible. The Government has also legislated to improve the effective running of the civil courts, most recently including the provision of a new Online Procedure Rule Committee in the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 and launching a consultation on proposals to increase the use of mediation.

To further support the judicial, physical, digital and staffing resource in the County Court, we will maximise the number of sitting days utilised across the jurisdiction, ensuring the administrative and staffing support required for those sitting days is in place, and will continue to deliver efficiencies through our Reform programme. The Spending Review settlement includes a further £324 million over the next three years to improve timeliness in civil and family courts and tribunals. This funding is being used to meet various costs (including judicial, staffing and legal aid) of providing additional sitting days in these jurisdictions to help recover performance and tackle backlogs following the Covid-19 pandemic.

The three courts in the South West London cluster are Wandsworth County Court, Kingston County and West London Family Court. These courts will benefit from the measures described above, as will other county courts across England and Wales.

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