Recommendation 13

It explained that it had several ways it can gather user feedback. For example, it told us that every director in HMCTS was sponsoring an area of the programme which allowed them to listen to user feedback first-hand. HMCTS also stated that it had “six or seven other new mechanisms” for getting better feedback, including webinars and an online chat system, through which users can report specific issues that they were experiencing. However, HMCTS told us that it was “deeply concerned” about, for example, legal advisers who had reported through the webinars that the system was difficult for them to use and that they did not have faith or confidence that HMCTS was addressing their issues. It committed to listening to their concerns and responding, “as best we can”.24 We received written evidence from the Law Society, which told us that HMCTS tended to “focus on the positives of the common platform rollout”, despite this not aligning with user feedback about how the service was working on the ground.25