Recommendation 4

HMCTS and the Ministry cannot fully assess whether the reforms have provided value for money as they have not captured the full costs of the programme. Despite our earlier concerns, the National Audit Office found that the programme costs still may not capture the full costs of reforming the courts and tribunals. HMCTS’s latest business case does not include costs incurred by the CPS in developing interfaces with common platform, following changes made to common platform’s design. Of its £1.3 billion budget, HMCTS has £120 million remaining to deliver outstanding reforms and claims that it has a clear understanding of what is left to deliver with the remaining funding as it has costed most elements left to deliver for each project still underway. However, this will not reflect all of the remaining work needed to support the reforms. HMCTS has already moved some projects out of the programme into its business-as-usual activities, even though they are not complete and require further work. For example, despite HMCTS moving the online portal for divorce cases to business as usual, the portal continues to require improvements. In March 2022, HMCTS found that 55% of divorce cases could not be completed online and required manual interventions. Although fixing this is important if HMCTS is to gain the benefits it planned from this reform, HMCTS will fund the future costs of this and similar projects from outside of the budget for the reform programme. HMCTS also plans to reform fewer services than it intended with its remaining budget because it has assessed that it could not finish all the projects Progress on the courts and tribunals reform programme 7 within the programme timeline. As part of its recent reset, it has paused reforms to several services which will no longer be covered by the funding allocated to the programme. Recommendation 4: The Ministry and HMCTS should write to us within six months setting out how they will assess the full cost of the reform program