https://insidehmcts.blog.gov.uk/justice-connected-inside-common-platform-podcast-transcript/
Justice Connected: Inside Common Platform - podcast transcript
Aaron Wilson:
Hello and welcome back to the Inside HMCTS podcast, where today we're diving into the digital transformation of the justice system. This time we're focusing on Common Platform, a digital case management system that brings together a range of different legacy case management systems under a single, unified platform. It's been designed and developed alongside Justice Partners.
And while it's been challenging at times, it's also creating new ways of working that are faster, more transparent, and ultimately more joined up from those in courts to police officers and prison staff. We'll hear what it's changed, what it's made possible and what still needs improving.
To understand just how far the system has come, we start with senior legal manager Janine. She's worked in magistrates’ courts for more than 40 years, and she's seen the shift from entirely paper based processes to something far more connected.
Janine Burke:
So how things have changed for me. We used to receive all the charge sheets and the summonses and everything from the police or paper copies.
Everything was paper. I had a manual typewriter where we used to be used to put the, the court lists. The court register into the, you know, into the type writer and actually sit there and physically type out names, addresses, dates of birth.
All the charges had to be entered onto the court register. And then, when you went into court, I then became a trainee legal adviser and qualified as a solicitor within the service. And the big difference now is that, it's all digital. Everything is digital. Common Platform is a computer system that allows us to, present the cases in the courtroom.
Magistrates can access all the information. The legal advisor can access all the information of the case. So the police will start by inputting onto Common Platform. The case can then be accessed by the Crown Prosecution Service, by the court Service, and by, the defence solicitors.
Aaron Wilson:
From the courts let’s turn to policing. Assistant Chief Constable Jenny Gilmer is the national policing lead for the courts, and she's clear that systems like Common Platform have started to change the way agencies communicate and share information.
Jenny Gilmer:
It’s all incredibly important. The older systems, pre–Common Platform on which we were previously operating, were increasingly just not fit for purpose, becoming quite outdated, quite antiquated. The new system allows things like case specific alerts, automatic generation of orders and notices, much easier access to information about individual cases progressing through the system.
So having everything in the Common Platform now means we've got much better national oversight of case progression as well, and that can lead to greater understanding and greater flexibility around about how we can collectively manage challenges, backlogs, pinch points, perhaps in the system.
It's a very accessible system to everyone who's got a license to use it. My understanding is that last count, that was about 13,000 people. All the people using the system were seeing the same information. The feedback that we are getting in the centre from forces is that it is allowing them to work much more accurately, much more swiftly and at greater pace.
Aaron Wilson:
For frontline police stuff, that change has been especially noticeable in the day to day court process. Debbie Taylor and Wayne Butterfield from West Yorkshire Police, have spent decades working with paper case files and legacy systems.
Debbie Taylor:
It's changed dramatically and we've moved with the times.
Wayne Butterfield:
To actually have, Common Platform, which is web based, and it just looks like a modern system, and its user friendly, and it just looks like a lot of other current systems.
Aaron Wilson:
And it's not just that the process has become digital. It's what that digital shift enables. For Wayne and Janine, being able to view and update the same case information as other justice partners is one of the most valuable parts of the Common Platform system.
Janine Burke:
It helps everyone because we're all viewing the information at the same time, and information can be uploaded into that one place. There isn't the delay of, you know, emailing and waiting for responses. Everything can be held there, and everything is is accessible for everybody.
Wayne Butterfield:
When CPS access it, they're seeing the same information that we see and again, for the defence as well when they log on they can see certain information that we can see, so we've got transparency there.
Aaron Wilson:
That shared access is also making it easier to scale up. Debbie and Wayne's team is now handling more cases than ever before. And they say that wouldn't have been possible without a more modern way of working.
Debbie Taylor:
We've got more cases than ever before going to court, which equals more people. So yeah, there's lots of new faces in the building and that's all thanks to Common Platform, really.
Wayne Butterfield:
The fact that we can request cases to be withdrawn, it is another huge, huge win for us. Because before, if we wanted to withdraw a case, it would be an email to court saying please withdraw this. And given the huge inboxes that we used to have our local court, sometimes that email could be missed. Or sometimes it was placed on a file and that was missed. And then the defendant will be proved in absence, when we wanted it to be withdrawn.
And the next thing we would know is we've got a very unhappy person complaining to us, saying, I've just had, I know through asking for hundreds of pounds fine and I've got three points on my license when West Yorkshire Police told me that this case would be withdrawn and we would then have to get that reopened in court and withdrawn, which takes up more court time, takes up our time, and the fact that we've got the control of, requesting cases be withdrawn and the confident site will be acted on. That just removes a big problem that we used to have.
Aaron Wilson:
And the benefits don't stop at the courtroom door. Andy Frankcom, a senior leader at Eastwood Park Prison explained how digital case access helps prisons act quickly and confidently when cases reach.
Andy Frankcom:
Yeah, it was that we were very much reliant on the court service in terms of if there's any documentation missing, we'd have to contact them either, maybe in the first instance by telephone, but a lot of the time it would be done via email because you know, obviously they need to know who's asking for this this sort of documentation is actually who they say they are.
So, when you send an email, you know, you can sometimes wait a day, a couple of days to get a response because whereas when you've got that system available to you, if you need that paperwork you can almost get it instantaneously. So yeah, in that respect, it's it's definitely been a positive is certainly streamlined and has reduced.
It hasn't completely eliminated the need for us to contact the court because there's still things that we do need to clarify that may not necessarily be immediately clear from the documents that we're able to access on the Common Platform. But yeah, it's certainly reduce the amount of interaction we've had to have, you know, whether that's telephone or email communication with the court service.
Aaron Wilson:
With so many users accessing the same system in real time, small problems don't need to become big ones. Here's Wayne again on how quickly they were able to get an urgent case resolved when the usual systems failed.
Wayne Butterfield:
We had an issue last week where we had a server issue within West Yorkshire Police and it was affecting the transmission of cases between our niche and HMCTS and other systems. And so, we had one urgent case that had to go through, and we would always have to rely on Bradford, on Libra we would have to telephone the court and get them to manually put it on.
And again, we've got the issues with telephone contact. So it was the first time that we'd used kind of the backup process of contacting SJS. And I've got to say, we managed to get that done, very quickly, very seamlessly, very easily last week, we shot it across in an email and we got that case on, and dealt with, that day, which I ask for any more.
Aaron Wilson:
Of course, any system change, especially one this big, comes with challenges. Janine and Andy are honest about what that transition was like and why sticking with it matters.
Janine Burke:
I'll not pretend that, it was welcomed. It wasn't. There was quite a bit of resistance. And I think that one of the issues being that an agile system, I think a frustration is that something needs to be changed, and it takes some time to actually change it. So there are some, some issues like that. However, when you look at back to where we were with the paper, you know, it's a no brainer really.
Andy Frankcom:
There is going to be times when it's it does create its challenges as well. But I think probably that the biggest challenge that it seems to be is around the standardisation of the warrants, and just how they're set out. And I think, you know, I don't know how many Crown magistrates’ courts there are in the country, I mean, we serve in in excess of 80 magistrates’ courts, just this establishment alone, so I'm not sure if that's a system issue or a system of work issue, but, that's probably the biggest challenge going forward.
Aaron Wilson:
As more users and processes come online, improvements are still being made. It's been a long journey to get Common Platform to where it is now, and with that comes new challenges to overcome. Here's what some of our guests think could make the system even stronger in the future.
Janine Burke:
The listing and scheduling of cases is a tricky one. Through Common Platform, and hopefully in the not too distant future that will be improved.
Wayne Butterfield:
And yeah, I think the only thing it will be nitpicking, it is under those circumstances where we kind of request things to be withdrawn, as if we would have some automatic response, flagged said that's being done rather than having to go and do a manual check. But, yeah, the information is there for us to check.
But because it goes into a huge queue and we just have to keep manually checking when that's being done, a flag back to me to say that's being done would be icing on the cake really.
Aaron Wilson:
And despite the learning curve, our guests wouldn't go back. Their advice: be patient and keep going.
Andy Frankcom:
It's like anything. I mean, we probably only scratched the surface with the in the prison service because obviously the courts use it a lot more on a daily basis. I mean, we use it as an information thing. I mean, obviously the courts, I would say, that's their main system for, for their how they do their work.
So yeah, just, you know, it's going to probably be difficult to begin with. But it's only like anything else that when you when you're new to something and it's a change, you know, everybody deals with change in slightly different ways. Some people are slightly more resistant to change than others, but as long as you see it is something that certainly can be of hopefully of benefit to you in the way that you do your work.
And if it saves you time and it saves your resource, in our line of work, that can only be a good thing.
Aaron Wilson:
Thanks so much for listening to this episode. If you've enjoyed it, found it interesting, or even have feedback that you'd like to share, you can leave a comment on our blog page or send us a message through our social media channels. The Common Platform may still be evolving, but it's already helping police, courts, prosecutors and prisons to work more closely and more consistently in service of justice.
We'll be back soon with another episode of inside HMCTS. But for now, wherever you're tuning from, take care.