County courts: Phyiscal estate in disrepair
The county court is a “dysfunctional operation that has failed to adequately deliver civil justice across England and Wales”, MPs said today in a damning report.
“It is not tenable to continue without fundamental reform,” according to the cross-party justice select committee, which called for an “urgent and comprehensive, root-and-branch review” that would create a plan for reducing the “entrenched” and “systemic” delays and inefficiencies.
“We found that the situation in the county court is dire and requires urgent attention. The court estate is in a state of significant disrepair following years of ‘chronic underfunding’, with regional variation remaining a perennial issue, and the operations of the court having been failed by a dysfunctional attempt at digital reform.
“The committee found that the problems would be all the greater without the commendable efforts of court staff to operate a system that fails to provide access to justice.”
It contrasted the absence of attention on the county courts – what it called the “Cinderella service” of the justice system – with the reviews currently underway into both sentencing and the criminal courts.
As well as the failed court modernisation programme – which ended this year after nine years with only 23% of civil cases being digital end to end [1] – the committee highlighted recruitment and retention issues for both judges and court staff, and a complex and dysfunctional “patchwork” of outdated paper-based and digital systems.
“It is very difficult to understand why the county court continues to rely on paper files, which need to be shipped around the country at great cost,” it said. This was a “serious cause” of delays.
The MPs acknowledged that the pandemic significantly contributed to the backlog in cases but the data “clearly shows it only exacerbated existing trends”.
HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) must develop a manageable programme to reduce the delays to pre-2015 levels by the end of this Parliament, they said.
Though ministers and officials “openly recognised” the problems, it was “unclear how HMCTS, together with the judiciary and the Ministry of Justice, intends to address them”.
The committee said the review must be launched by spring 2026 and encompass recruitment and retention, establish “a realistic and sustainable plan for future digitisation and capital investment”, and explore the future role of artificial intelligence.
The report called for HMCTS to explain how much, “if any”, of the £220m of capital expenditure it was allocated between August 2023 and March 2025 was spent on the dilapidated county court estate.
Among the more eye-catching recommendations were that litigants must be able to recover from HMCTS the legal, travel and subsistence costs wasted as a result of over-listing and/or poor court administration preventing their cases from being heard.
The modernisation programme was “over-ambitious and ultimately under-delivered” in transforming the county court; all projects that were removed from its scope over the years should be prioritised “as a matter of urgency”.
The committee was extremely critical of the way the Civil National Business Centre in Northampton operated.
“Despite its intended aim of simplifying the operation of the county court, the centralisation of essential court operations has had a devastating impact on the delivery of justice, entrenching the postcode lottery and results in debilitating delays for all parties.
“The current methods of contacting a county court do not work. Users cannot find the necessary contact information, and centralised inboxes and phone numbers appear unmonitored as they fail to provide the required response rate.”
The centre “must be integrated” with local court case management systems to improve coordination and responsiveness.
Given the “notable” increase in litigants in person, the committee raised concerns too over the accessibility of the county court’s “complex” procedural rules”. Evidence from lawyers pointed to a perception that judges were overly lenient and gave the benefit of the doubt to self-represented parties.
Other recommendations included:
- HMCTS must collect and publish data on individual court and tribunal performances to allow for the identification of regional disparities, and support investment planning in reducing county court delays;
- HMCTS, together with the judiciary, must work together to deliver data-informed listing practices ensuring any over-listing is minimised;
- Any review must include an evaluation of the judicial recruitment offer, looking at pay and progression opportunities, current working conditions and regional recruitment initiatives. There also needs to be an “in-depth assessment of the recruitment and retention crisis”, extending current discussions to improve HMCTS pay scales to current and required workload capacities.
- HMCTS, and the Ministry of Justice, must facilitate the greater use of remote hearings;
- A single case management system must be introduced to provide real-time status updates for all cases;
- All claims must be issued a single reference number;
- HMCTS must enhance existing electronic systems to support the upload of larger documents for all types of claims;
- Any future review should evaluate expanding mandatory mediation beyond small claims as now; and
- The Ministry of Justice must launch a consultation into how it plans to effectively use AI to improve the performance and operations of the county court and report its conclusions by the end of 2026.