Courts: LiPs spend ages on phone to call centres
Complex court administrative processes “increasingly function as gatekeepers to justice” and shut out litigants in person (LiPs), research has found.
Despite policy emphasis on digital modernisation, current court systems “largely serve professional users”, leaving LiPs at the mercy of “high-volume call-centre systems that are ill-equipped to provide accurate or consistent procedural guidance”.
Blind Justice, a community interest company that supports LiPs and promotes “evidence-led” court reform, said that unlike represented parties, “unrepresented users lack professional intermediaries to mitigate administrative error”.
Where documents were not logged, correspondence unanswered or guidance incorrect, LiPs had “no effective mechanism” to correct the record.
As a result, deadlines were missed through no fault of the litigant, applications never placed before a judge and “procedural prejudice arose” without substantive determination.
LiPs were left without a unified digital portal, access to the court file, confirmation that filings had been received or an administrative audit trail.
“In practice, this forces reliance on high-volume call-centre systems that are ill-equipped to provide accurate or consistent procedural guidance.
“Recent public reporting of software faults that left documents inaccessible for extended periods further underscores the fragility of current systems.”
Blind Justice based its report on an “anonymised composite analysis” from over 20 cases involving LiPs.
Most involved missing or unprocessed documents, conflicting information provided by different HM Courts and Tribunal Service teams and emails that were not logged or acknowledged.
The unrepresented users all reported prolonged call-centre delays, “often exceeding 20 cumulative hours over short periods”.
Repeated failures in “basic communication” were “a consistent feature” of cases examined, including emails “sent over weeks without response”, documents delivered in person without acknowledgement and “contradictory instructions from different administrative units”.
Alongside administrative failure, researchers said they identified a “broader and deeply concerning decline in trust in the justice system and legal profession”.
Unrepresented users “consistently reported low confidence in legal processes and oversight mechanisms”.
Many described experiences they believed amounted to professional misconduct, including failures of disclosure, misleading procedural advice, or disregard of vulnerability.
Many also “expressed frustration that complaints to professional regulators were either not progressed or concluded without substantive engagement, contributing to a perception of regulatory distance and lack of accountability”.
The report went on: “This erosion of trust has systemic consequences. Where confidence in legal professionals and regulators is low, litigants are less likely to seek assistance, disclose vulnerability, or engage constructively with process.”
Researchers recommended, among other things, “universal logging of all filings and correspondence”, transparent administrative audit trails accessible to LiPs, consistent procedural guidance, trained administrative staff “with access to full case records”, “meaningful safeguards” where vulnerability was disclosed and “accountability mechanisms where administrative error causes prejudice”.
Edward Romain, a former LiP himself and the founder and executive director of Blind Justice, commented: “Our research shows that unrepresented litigants are disproportionately affected by administrative and procedural failures that can have serious, life-altering consequences.”
Mr Romain said a more detailed version of the Blind Justice report had been sent by his local MP, business and trade secretary Peter Kyle, to justice secretary David Lammy.