Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 5
Sixty-First Report - Progress on the courts and tribunals reform programme
Published 30 Jun 2023
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Court Reform Programme: progress review All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
HMCTS has not specified how its recent changes to the programme will impact the savings promised, nor can it demonstrate whether reformed services are on track to deliver the required efficiencies. In 2019, HMCTS expected the programme to save £244 million a year and claimed that it had saved £133 million so far. The National Audit Office found that HMCTS expects reforms to deliver £220 million in annual savings from 2025–26 onwards. However, it has not outlined how these savings will be impacted by its recent decision to pause reforms to some of its services. In response to our previous concerns that HMCTS’s ability to monitor whether programme savings are directly linked to reforms, it has developed a new methodology to assess how efficiently its services are working. But HMCTS acknowledges that this methodology still needs to be refined as although it provides comparative information about the cost of services, it still cannot identify whether this is due to the effect of reforms, or due to another reason such as changes in demand. Although the analysis cannot explain why, the results suggest that the costs per user have increased rather than decreased for most services, so there is still a lot to do to reduce costs and make savings. HMCTS recognises it needs to do more to understand whether reforms are having the impacts they intended. Recommendation 5: As part of its Treasury Minute response, HMCTS should set out: a) The impact of recent changes to its plans on the expected savings from the programme; and b) What it is doing to better understand how efficiently reformed services are working and how it will use this information to ensure it is on track to deliver expected savings.
From: Public Accounts Committee, Sixty-First Report - Progress on the courts and tribunals reform programme (HC 1002), 30 June 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 24 September 2023 (deadline 30 August 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it "agrees with the Committee's recommendation" on each of the six conclusions, describing five as "Recommendation implemented" and one, on assessing the full cost of the programme, with a target implementation date of December 2023.
- On assurance of plans, the response says the programme is "conducting ongoing reviews of plans", overseen by programme boards and a portfolio board, with updated confidence assessments reported against each portfolio-level milestone.
- On access to justice, it commits to publishing four completed assessments in autumn 2023, with further publications "in 2024 and into 2025". Where impacts are identified, it will do further work and, "where appropriate", implement a service fix.
- On full costs, the government will respond within the six-month deadline, considering the proposed inclusions "where they are within the scope of the programme". It adds that in some cases it will be necessary to rely on estimates.
- On savings, it says delay will mean £50 million fewer recurring annual net savings by the end of 2025-26. The full £227 million is "still expected" a year later than originally expected, by the end of 2026-27.