HM Courts and Tribunals Service

7. Mrs N complains HMCTS failed to record an essential part of the hearing she attended, inappropriately withheld the requests for transcripts, and delayed providing her with the transcript. Mrs N complains HMCTS also significantly delayed responding to her complaint and provided dishonest responses and dismissed her claims without considering all the information she sent in regarding the complaint.

8. Mrs N explains these mistakes caused significant stress to her and costs for three court applications and two additional hearings which would not have been necessary had the original hearing been recorded properly. Mrs N tells us this has been drawn out unnecessarily over three years and has had a large impact on her health and wellbeing.

9. Mrs N is seeking an apology, changes and clarity to the complaint procedure, and financial compensation for the emotional impact and court costs.

10. In December 2021, Mrs N attended a hearing in person for her court case.

11. In October 2022 Mrs N requested an urgent transcript of this hearing as she wanted to use it to support her evidence in an upcoming hearing where Mrs N was arguing the previous settlement terms agreed in 2021 had been misrepresented.

12. Later in October 2022 Mrs N complained about the delay in receiving the transcript. The Transcription company (separate from HMCTS) sent the transcript to Mrs N in November 2022.

13. After receiving the transcript Mrs N raised concerns the transcript was missing the parts she was looking for. The Transcription company agreed to review the audio recording to identify the part Mrs N was requesting.

14. In November 2022 HMCTS responded to Mrs N’s complaint about the delay confirming it received the request in early October 2022 and sent it in late October to be transcribed. Mrs N responded to this with further concerns and stating the response had not answered her questions.

15. In late November 2022 the Transcription company told Mrs N it had completed the transcript of the section in the middle but were unable to release it to her because the court was not in session (and Mrs N did not have judicial permission to have this transcribed) and because the transcript was unintelligible due to several inaudible sections of the recording.

16. In February 2023 HMCTS confirmed it had escalated Mrs N’s complaint for a review. Mrs N responded to this asking for clarity. Mrs N sent emails chasing a response and sent in further complaints between February 2023 and July 2023 regarding the section of transcript she believed had not been recorded.

17. In August 2023 HMCTS provided a review response apologising for the delay to the transcript and explaining staff could see no issue with the hearing recording. Mrs N requested the complaint to be escalated again in August 2023 to the final stage as she was unhappy with the response HMCTS provided.

18. HMCTS provided a final response in September 2023 stating it would not be upholding her complaint and stating the transcript needed to be approved by a judge so HMCTS could not comment on delays. This letter signposted Mrs N to the PHSO.

19. Following this Mrs N asked for HMCTS to transcribe the first part of the 2021 proceedings. Mrs N raised another complaint in December 2023 about delays. The transcription company sent Mrs N the transcript in January 2024.

20. After receiving the second transcript, Mrs N raised further concerns about inconsistencies between the first and second transcript, indicating missing information. In May 2024 HMCTS responded to state the final response meant the previous matter was closed, and the new concerns would be logged as a new complaint.

21. In June 2024 HMCTS provided a first response to the new complaint apologising for the stress Mrs N experienced in chasing the transcripts and reassuring her HMCTS would not purposefully hold back any information.

22. Mrs N responded in July 2024 to complain this response had been sent without proper understanding of her complaint and the issues she had raised and asked them to further consider her actual points raised. In September 2024 HMCTS confirmed her complaint had been escalated to the next level.

23. Mrs N contacted her MP in November 2024 who sent an email to HMCTS asking for a response. HMCTS sent Mrs N a response in December 2024 and sent another response to her MP about the issues.

24. Mrs N complained about the responses in January 2025 stating she felt there was still outstanding issues which HMCTS had not addressed.

25. In February 2025 HMCTS responded with a final stage response where it offered Mrs N £350 for the delay in HMCTS sending her requests to listen to the court recording to a Judge for approval. Mrs N was then signposted to the PHSO again.

28. Before we decide if we should conduct a detailed investigation of a complaint, we look at whether there are signs the organisation has got something wrong. We do this by comparing what should have happened with what did happen. We also compare whether the organisation has done enough to remedy the impact of anything which it did get wrong.

Recording and Transcription of 2021 Court Case

29. Mrs N is concerned the recording of the hearing in 2021 was incomplete and based on the evidence she had seen she believed the transcript she got was from a recording started in the middle of a conversation. Mrs N told us the parties had been instructed to return with an agreement at 14:00, and the transcript and audio recording did not appear to start until 14:48. Mrs N feels the failure to fully record the whole proceedings has disadvantaged her in later hearings about this case.

30. HMCTS have consistently said there is no evidence of issues with the recordings, and everything which was said while court was in session had been provided to the transcription company and subsequently to Mrs N. It also explained transcribers will only transcribe what is said whilst the Judge is in court and the court is in session.

31. The Civil Procedure Rules (Part 39.9) states at any hearing the proceedings will be tape recorded or digitally recorded unless the Judge directs otherwise. Therefore, we would expect the recordings to be complete and capture the whole proceedings whilst court is in session.

32. We have been provided with all recordings from the December 2021 court hearing. To be clear, our role here is not to scrutinise whether the transcription company accurately transcribed the hearing, but to ensure HMCTS correctly conducted its administrative duty to record all the hearing and send this for transcription.

33. From listening to the recording, we can see there was a continuous recording from 10:00 until 17:00. This recording had no breaks or sections where it appeared the recording equipment had been turned off, muted, or started in the middle of a conversation.

34. We can understand Mrs N is concerned the transcript she received suggests the recording and transcript begins halfway through a conversation. We have listened to the sections in between 14:00 and 14:48 and found no evidence of conversations held whilst court was in session which have not been transcribed, and agree it appears the court session did resume at 14:48 when we could hear what sounded like the judge returning to the courtroom.

35. Mrs N has been granted permission to listen to the audio recording herself and we would encourage her to take up this offer if she would like to confirm for herself what is on the recording. We note the section recorded between 14:00 and 14:48 which Mrs N believes contains important information for her case was out of session and mostly inaudible – in line with what the transcription company told her. We do not consider this a fault of HMCTS recording.

36. We cannot conclude HMCTS failed to record any part of the hearing or withheld any recordings or information from the transcription company, meaning it acted in line with what the Civil Procedure Rules require.

37. We therefore will not be taking any further action on this part of the complaint as we have not found any indications of maladministration in HMCTS’s actions.

Delays to transcript requested in 2022

38. Mrs N complains in early October 2022 she requested an urgent 48 hour return for the transcripts which she did not receive until November 2022. Mrs N tells us by the time she received the transcripts the deadline to include these as evidence in her appeal had passed. Mrs N again feels these actions disadvantaged her in her appeal against the outcome of the 2021 court hearing.

39. The first complaint response states HMCTS staff have 2 working days to process a transcript request form and send it out to the chosen transcription company. It explains there is a section E on the form which must be completed by court staff before HMCTS can process the transcription request and send it out to the transcription company.

40. We can see the HMCTS response also addressed Mrs N’s questions about the 48 hour turnaround. HMCTS explained the 48 hour turnaround time to get the transcript back to Mrs N was part of the transcriptions company’s services, not the timeframe for HMCTS.

41. The HMCTS guidance for requesting a transcript states court staff have 2 working days to process the transcript request form and submit it to the transcription company. While not explicitly stated, we consider this guidance means two working days from the date the completed form is received (including section E completed by court staff), not two working days from the date HMCTS receives the transcript request from the person.

42. We can see from the records HMCTS received the posted transcription request form 6 working days after Mrs N stated she sent in the request. We can see from an email this delay appears to have been due to a mistake in the post room.

43. Two working days after receiving the request form from the post room, CRATU sent an email to the court asking them to forward the form to the Judge’s clerk. Three working days later the court staff emailed to say the request form was not attached to the email. CRATU then sent the form back to the court on the same day.

44. An email from three working days later shows the judge’s clerk had not yet received the transcript request form, which CRATU then shared with them directly. From this receipt it was five working days before CRATU received the completed transcript request form. CRATU sent this to the transcription company two working days later.

45. To summarise, there were 21 working days between Mrs N sending the request form and CRATU sending the recordings to the transcription company. We appreciate this process does appear to have been affected by a number of smaller administrative mistakes in the post room, with attaching the request form in an email, and in getting the request form in front of the Judge for approval. These specific administrative mistakes accounted for 12 working days of the delay.

46. Any other delay we have seen in actioning Mrs N’s request appears to have been either from expected process delays, or from waiting for the judge to approve the request.

47. We understand Mrs N does not believe her request needed to be seen by a judge for approval. We have looked at some additional internal information on the request form process and can see there is no specific timeframe for how long a court should take to complete Section E of the form, or whether a judge needs to see the request before sending this back to CRATU.

48. As there is no specific guidance we could find on timescales, we have looked at whether we would consider HMCTS acted in line with our principles of good administration.

49. HMCTS administrative court staff are not legally trained and should not make decisions on requests which may have a legal aspect. Our principles of good administration outline the importance of appropriately trained staff in decision making. In this case, we would not expect administrative staff to know whether a transcript required judicial permission, so we do not consider it inappropriate to ask the judge to review the request before completing the form and sending it back to CRATU with the recordings.

50. Our Principles of Good Administration also states organisations should deal with communication promptly within reasonable timescales and behave helpfully. We do not consider HMCTS staff at CRATU or the court exceeded what we would consider reasonable timescales, with the longest gap between internal communications about the transcript request being three working days.

51. We can also see from internal emails HMCTS staff were actively following up on the request during this time, and were doing what they could to try and resolve the request for Mrs N. We consider HMCTS’s actions in this case were in line with our principles.

52. We can see CRATU did process the completed transcript request form within two working days from receiving it from the court. This is in line with the only guidance available for the time limits for the transcription request form process.

53. To summarise, there were some administrative mistakes which caused delays above what we would consider reasonable in this process. When we see indications of administrative failings we have to consider the impact of these failings.

54. Without the mistakes, we consider the process could have taken around 9 working days to complete. This would always have been longer than Mrs N requested and expected from the service, meaning it is likely Mrs N would have been unhappy with the length of time the process took whether or not it was impacted by administrative mistakes.

55. We also consider when Mrs N received the transcript it did not contain the information she was seeking for her appeal. We consider this means even if the transcript was processed and made available to Mrs N before her appeal evidence deadline, it would likely not have changed what she was able to present at appeal.

56. We can see the delay will have been frustrating for Mrs N. We do not consider there was any wider impact on Mrs N or her court case outside of this frustration. Our severity of injustice guidance would consider this a lower level of impact for which an apology alone is enough to remedy the distress and frustration HMCTS caused.

57. HMCTS have already apologised for the delays. We do not consider there is any outstanding impact from this delay which would require any further remedy.

58. We will therefore not be taking any further action on this part of the complaint.

Delays to transcript requested in 2023 and audio request in 2024

59. Mrs N made a transcript request for the first half of the December 2021 hearing in August 2023 and did not receive the transcript back from the transcription service until mid-January 2024. Mrs N tells us during this time she had to repeatedly chase this up and felt HMCTS were purposefully delaying the request to cover up for the claimed recording issues (addressed above).

60. We can see there were unexplained delays to this process, as CRATU informed Mrs N in October 2023 it had not received a completed EX107 form from the court. We can see at the end of October 2023 an automatic response explained the court was experiencing a high volume of emails to the court and explained there may be delays in dealing with requests.

61. We can see Mrs N emailed both the court and the judge’s clerk multiple times about this request between September and November 2023. In November 2023 the court responded apologising for the delay in processing and confirming they had sent the request to CRATU.

62. At the end of November 2023 CRATU confirmed they had not received the completed EX107 form from the court and could not accept the uncompleted form from Mrs N. After Mrs N’s emails, CRATU contacted the court in early December to follow up on the missing form. At the end of December the transcription company confirmed it had now received the audio from the court and could not offer an expedited service to complete the transcript. Mrs N received the transcript in mid-January 2024.

63. As stated, it is clear there were delays and points where forms should have been shared between the court and CRATU which did not happen. HMCTS have acknowledged there were unacceptable delays and offered a remedy for this and other delays. We will consider below whether HMCTS have done enough to remedy the impact of these delays.

64. Mrs N also tells us she requested to attend court to listen to the recording in her original complaint in December 2023, and in later emails which HMCTS did not refer to a judge for approval until December 2024.

65. We have looked through Mrs N’s complaint file and cannot see she asked to listen to the recording in her original complaint in December 2023. The first reference we could find where she asked to listen to the recording was in her letter to the HMCTS CEO in April 2024.

66. The Practice Direction for access to audio recordings explains applications to hear the audio recording of a hearing should be made to the judge who heard the proceedings. In this case Mrs N made her request in a complaint to the CEO rather than an application to the court or the judge involved.

67. The court’s response in December 2024 states the court were first notified of the April 2024 request to listen to the audio after Mrs N sent the court further complaint emails in September 2024. The courts explained it could not see it had received the April 2024 letter and referred the request to listen to the audio to the judge responsible who had given permission. While there does appear to have been an issue in sharing this information, we do consider the courts acted on Mrs N’s request soon after it was reasonably made aware.

68. While the request could have been actioned earlier had the April 2024 complaint letter been properly shared, we also consider Mrs N also should have raised her request through the proper channels. Overall, we cannot place the responsibility for the delay solely on inaction or mistakes from HMCTS.

69. In its final response, HMCTS offered Mrs N £350 for the delays she had experienced through the whole transcript process and the distress this had caused her.

70. HMCTS complaints handling guidance states ex-gratia offers between £250 and £500 are appropriate for cases where a customer’s correspondence was not responded to over many months, and there were delays in dealing with this and with the resulting complaint with no evidence of delays affecting the judicial decisions.

71. We have seen evidence of poor communication and unacceptable delays in this process. We do consider the delays and poor communication in response to her requests will have caused Mrs N to be frustrated and distressed with HMCTS and its processes.

72. We have not seen evidence suggesting any of the delays significantly affected Mrs N’s legal case as the evidence Mrs N was seeking (a transcript of discussions which happened outside of the court session) was not possible to achieve through this process.

73. We also note Mrs N does not appear to have attended the court to listen to the audio recording since being granted permission, meaning even with a delay in sending this request for approval we cannot consider this impacted her case. Again, as stated above we would encourage Mrs N to take up this offer.

74. We consider £350 for the delays and resulting distress and frustration is sufficient to remedy the impact we have seen resulted from these issues. This amount is also in line with our own scale of injustice and financial remedy recommendations for delays causing distress and frustration with no further impact.

75. We therefore will not be taking any further action on this part of the complaint.

Complaint Handling in 2022 and 2024

76. Mrs N has raised with us a few concerns about how HMCTS have handled her original complaint into the December 2021 recording, and her second complaint which further raised concerns about the recording and the delay to another transcript. This includes significantly delayed responses at each stage of the complaints process, HMCTS sending responses without full consideration of her complaint, and dishonest responses.

77. Below is a brief summary of the timeline of how HMCTS responded to Mrs N’s first complaint between 2022 and August 2023: • October 2022 – Mrs N raised her first complaint about delays to the first transcription request • November 2022 – HMCTS provided a first response to her complaint • November 2022 – Mrs N raised further concerns about the response and missing parts of the transcript • February 2023 – HMCTS confirm it has escalated Mrs N’s complaint to the next complaint stage • March and April 2023 – Mrs N emailed the judge’s clerk and another HMCTS employee about her complaint asking for answers • May 2023 – Mrs N sends a letter to the operations manager of the court • June 2023 – Mrs N sends a letter to the CEO of HMCTS • August 2023 – HMCTS provided a second response and apologised for the delay • August 2023 – Mrs N writes to escalate her complaint again • September 2023 – Mrs N sends another letter about her complaint • September 2023 – HMCTS sends a final response signposting Mrs N to the PHSO.

78. Below is a brief summary of the timeline of how HMCTS responded to Mrs N’s second complaint: • December 2023 – Mrs N raises her second complaint about delays to a second transcript request • December 2023 – HMCTS confirms it has the complaint and is looking into it • April 2024 – Mrs N sends a letter to the CEO and the Head of the third tier complaint response service outlining her complaints and ongoing concerns about the recording (containing an evidence bundle) • May 2023 – HMCTS respond to the letter to the CEO explaining part of the complaint had already been fully addressed in September 2023 and the new complaint was with the court for a response • June 2024 – HMCTS provides a first response from the court relating to information in the complaint made in December 2023 • July 2024 – Mrs N responds unhappy with the response and stating the court had not read her complaint from April 2024 • September 2024 – Mrs N sends another email chasing a response and referencing a request to listen to the original court recording • September 2024 – Mrs N send an email to the third tier complaint response service asking for information about whether her complaint from April 2024 had been forwarded to the court • September 2024 - HMCTS third tier complaint response service confirms it had shared the letter with the court and could not comment on the complaint at this stage • November 2024 – Mrs N contacts her MP and the PHSO for support • December 2024 – HMCTS provide a second response • December 2024 – HMCTS sends a letter to Mrs N’s MP outlining what has happened and apologising for delays • January 2025 – Mrs N wrote a letter to the third tier complaint response service to outline her concerns • January 2025 – HMCTS respond confirming the escalation and advising responses are taking longer than usual • January 2025 – Mrs N sends a letter to the CEO about her complaint • February 2025 – HMCTS sends a final response to Mrs N’s complaint offering £350 for the distress caused by delays.

79. HMCTS guidance states staff should aim to provide a first response within 10 working days, aim to provide a review (second) response within 10 working days of the escalation request, and aim to provide a final response within 15 working days of the escalation request.

80. We can see HMCTS did repeatedly miss the aim for providing responses which we understand will have caused Mrs N much frustration. We do note at times Mrs N was sending large amounts of information to individuals not directly involved with her complaint which we consider will have added to any delays already in place from service pressures we see in organisations.

81. In all responses HMCTS apologised for the delays in providing responses, and in emails frequently advised Mrs N about service pressures and delays to responses due to a high volume of correspondence the department was dealing with.

82. Both our own severity of injustice guidance and the HMCTS guidance explain complaints about complaint response delays alone can and should be remedied with an apology if there is no wider impact.

83. We understand Mrs N believed through the complaints process HMCTS was purposefully being evasive and delaying responses to cover up what had happened with the December 2021 recording. As we have not found evidence of this, we cannot really consider the delays were malicious and caused any further impact to Mrs N than frustration.

84. We therefore consider the apologies HMCTS have provided are sufficient to remedy the impact of the delayed responses.

85. Mrs N has also raised concerns HMCTS provided responses without considering all the evidence.

86. We can see this happened in June 2024 when HMCTS provided a response to the online complaint Mrs N made and did not have access to the extensive complaint and evidence she had sent to the CEO in April 2024.

87. We have seen there was an issue with meant the complaint Mrs N made to the CEO in April 2024 did not end up with the court staff who were providing the first response. This explains why the first response did not reference the concerns Mrs N had raised in April 2024. While we understand this will have been frustrating, this was then remedied at the second level response when HMCTS provided a response fully considering what she raised in April 2024.

88. We note HMCTS also apologised for not having received this information. Overall we consider HMCTS apologising and providing a second more detailed response addressing this information was sufficient to remedy the frustration Mrs N felt with the process in line with our severity of injustice and the HMCTS complaint handling standards.

89. We therefore will not be looking at this point any further.

90. We can also see Mrs N was concerned the CEO response to her MP was also made without fully considering everything.

91. The CEO is not normally involved in the complaint’s procedure for HMCTS, and in this case it appears the CEO provided a response because Mrs N got her MP involved in the complaints process. We understand Mrs N was unhappy with the CEO’s response, however we want to highlight Mrs N’s concerns should have gone to the court who were dealing with the complaint who would have the most up to date information and not to the CEO who was not involved with the process.

92. We therefore will also not be looking at this point any further.

93. Finally, Mrs N has made reference to the responses being dishonest and covering up for irregularities and tampering with recordings. As we have outlined above we do not consider there were any irregularities and HMCTS have not lied when saying a judge reviewed the transcript request before it was processed.

94. We can see in February 2024 Mrs N asked the transcription company whether the transcript was sent for approval by a judge and they confirmed it had not and did not need to as there was no judgement in the transcript. We consider she was asking this to understand why there had been a delay in processing her transcript requests, as she has annotated the responses stating references in HMCTS responses to a judge’s approval were lies.

95. The HMCTS guidance on requesting a transcript explains extra time may be needed for the transcription company if it is required to submit the transcript itself to court for a judge’s approval before sharing with the requestor.

96. We can see the transcription company’s confirmation about the transcript not going via a judge for approval relates to approval after the transcript has been produced, not approval for the request itself. We consider this information may have added to Mrs N’s belief there was no need for a judge to approve her transcript request, which increased her concerns about how long it was taking HMCTS to process her requests and made her believe HMCTS were lying in their responses.

97. We can appreciate Mrs N was frustrated and felt like HMCTS were not being transparent, however we cannot agree any part of their responses were dishonest. We consider the responses HMCTS have given were truthful and transparent, in line with our UK Central Government Complaint Standards.

98. We therefore will not be taking any further action on this complaint.

99. We want to thank Mrs N for bringing this complaint to us.

1. We have carefully considered Mrs N’s complaint about HM Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS).

2. We have reviewed the audio recording and the transcript and cannot agree HMCTS failed to record any part of the hearing in session or provide this to the transcription service.

3. We have seen there were delays in the process to complete your transcript request forms in 2022 and 2023. We consider HMCTS has already done enough to remedy the frustration these delays caused and have not seen any further impact on Mrs N to indicate any outstanding injustice.

4. We have seen there were also delays in referring Mrs N’s April 2024 request to listen to the court. We have seen Mrs N did not raise the request through the regular route, and this request then was not fully received by the court until September 2024, after which the court actioned the request. We consider the £350 offered to remedy this and the transcript delays is sufficient to remedy the distress and frustration we have seen.

5. We have seen there were delays to the complaint handling, however we consider HMCTS has apologised for this which is sufficient for the impact of the delays. We also consider HMCTS did not provide dishonest responses or were acting maliciously with the delays.

6. We are therefore taking no further action on this complaint.