Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has consulted (a) legal practitioners and (b) other stakeholders on plans to reintroduce Flexible Operating Hours in the courts.

The Flexible Operating Hours pilots took place at Manchester Civil Justice Centre and the County Court at Brentford from September 2019 to March 2020. Local Implementation Teams, which include legal representatives and local support groups, were set up in Manchester and Brentford to plan and deliver the pilots. To support a cross-justice system approach to the evaluation of the pilots HMCTS set up an Evaluation Advisory Group which includes representatives from the judiciary, partner government agencies, the Bar Council, the Bar Standards Board, the Law Society and CILEx.

HMCTS has appointed a consortium of IFF Research and Frontier Economics to carry out an independent evaluation of the Flexible Operating Hours pilots. The evaluation is being conducted as set out in the evaluation plan, published July 2019: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/flexible-operating-hours-evaluation-plan-and-summary. The evaluation report will be published following completion, in the autumn and we will consider its findings carefully.

Proposals to extend court operating hours are being considered as part of the HMCTS recovery plan. Working groups under the leadership of judiciary have been established to develop these proposals which include members of the legal profession across the jurisdictions.