Court and tribunal reform
Susan Acland-Hood explains why she believes digital change and modernisation are so important and why simply putting more cash into the existing system cannot be the long-term answer to the challenges we face.
A blog by Susan Acland-Hood in which she details how some of our courts and tribunals buildings can be uncomfortable and difficult to use, even at the best of times. Susan confirms we are well aware of these challenges, and we’re doing everything we can with the resources available to improve the situation now and in the longer term through our reform programme.
Susan Acland-Hood explains that one important part of our overall reform programme to build a more modern, accessible and efficient justice system, is to enable our courts to make greater use of video technology. Susan details that with increasing sophistication in the technology available, we believe it can play an even greater role in the future and in particular, could enable some hearings to take place without the need for a physical courtroom altogether.
Emma Petty, Service Manager for the Public Law project provides an update on the project, its aims, and how it will be delivered. Our Public Law project sits in the family jurisdiction and forms part of the wider HMCTS £1bn reform programme. In October 2017, we set out our intention to reform the service around taking a public law case to and through court.
Susan Acland-Hood talks about our first three legal professional roadshows and how they were full of ideas, commitment and challenge that discussed the overall reform programme with a particular focus on scheduling and listing practice, flexible operating hours and virtual hearings.
A blog post from Linda Green on the Identity and Access Management service, the functionality within the Common Platform that allows different users to have an identity on the system and ability to sign in and access the various services. It also provides a service for administrators to create, update, manage and remove organisations and users.
A blog post from Susan Acland-Hood in which she talks about what is planned on courts and tribunals reform over the next 18 months. This includes taking the things we’ve begun to develop so far and building them out further.
Susan Acland-Hood confirms that today, we are publishing the invitation to tender for an independent organisation to provide an effective assessment of the pilots along with a supporting prospectus, which sets out the rationale for testing flexible court operating hours, and invites views on the detail of how the pilots can best be carried out.
A blog post from Mike Brazier who work in HMCTS’s Accessibility and Inclusion Team. Mike talks about how his team is responsible for ensuring we help and support people who are not online make sure that they can also experience the benefits of using our online services.
The second in a series of blog posts from Susan Acland-Hood. The first one set out why reform is needed and why we need to do more to engage and talk more widely about what we’re doing. In this blog post Susan talks a bit more about the approach we are taking to reform, and why we are well set up to succeed and explains about what impact changes have already made.