HM Courts and Tribunals Service

3. Mr A complains about the service he received from HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) between 22 April 2025 and 17 July 2025. He complains that:

• The court portal was not updated • The court incorrectly confirmed that the consent order had not been approved, when in fact it had

4. Mr A explained that he has incurred legal fees while attempting to clarify and resolve a mistake made by HMCTS.

5. By bringing the complaint to us, Mr A is seeking a refund of £468.

6. Mr A was going through divorce proceedings and had a hearing scheduled for 23 April 2025. The night before the hearing, he sent in a consent order asking the court to cancel the hearing.

7. It appears this was not put in front of a judge, so the hearing went ahead. After the hearing, the court record was updated to say the consent order was refused (which Mr A says was incorrect). Following this, he says he incurred legal fees to try to get the record corrected.

Failure to Update Court Portal

9. Mr A was due to have a court hearing on 23 April 2025. He explained that he issued paperwork beforehand, and it was confirmed that the hearing would be vacated on the basis the General Order (GO) was confirmed and issued concerning the Consent Order (CO).

10. However, Mr A explains that the Court portal wrongly showed that the order was not approved. Between 23 April 2025 and 23 May 2025, his lawyer (and the lawyer of the other party) tried to resolve this issue with the Court, including contacting the judge directly to do so.

11. Mr A complains that he incurred legal fees because of this, and believes they should be covered by HMCTS because the extra work his lawyer charged him for came as the result of an administrative error by the Court

12. HMCTS first responded to Mr A’s complaint on 18 June 2026. It acknowledged that he had submitted the CO late on 22 April 2025, and that the Judge approved it on 23 April 2025.

13. At this point, HMCTS appeared to be wrongly under the impression that Mr A was complaining that the hearing remained listed, rather than about the portal not showing the CO as approved.

14. After Mr A clarified matters, HMCTS responses again on 30 June 2025. It explained that while the Judge had approved the order, the Judge had recorded it as not approved, which is why it showed as such in the portal. HMCTS explained that because the Judge, rather than HMCTS, had recorded it as not appropriate, there was no maladministration on the part of HMCTS. As such, it could not provide compensation.

15. Mr A remained dissatisfied, and so HMCTS provided another response, this time final, on 17 July 2025. This response upheld the previous decision, for the reasons already outlined.

16. 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 have done this and have not found any indications that something has gone wrong.

17. HMCTS is correct that it is not responsible for the actions of a Judge, and as such we cannot find maladministration or service failure on the part of HMCTS because it followed the information provided to it by the Judge.

18. Regarding Mr A’s complaint that HMCTS failed to update the portal, we can see that the error was clarified by the Judge on 9 May 2025. Once court staff received these directions, the portal was updated and the order was issued on 20 May 2025.

19. As part of our investigation, we looked to see whether HMCTS has a policy which specifically outlines a time frame for processing orders.

20. No such specific policy exists, but HMCTS explained that courts aim to process orders within 10 working days (although this isn’t always possible due to workloads).

21. In the case of Mr A, the CO was approved on 9 May 2025 and issued by court staff on 20 May 2025. This is a total of 8 working days and is therefore within the expected timeframe.

22. As a result, we will not take this point of complaint forward for further investigation.

Misadvice

23. Mr A complains that the court incorrectly confirmed that the Consent Order (CO) had not been approved, when in fact it had.

24. His lawyer had emailed the court to seek clarity from the court owing to the discrepancy on the portal. Mr A explained that on 24 April 2025, the court responded to say that the CO was not approved.

25. He did not receive notification that the portal had been updated until 22 May 2025.

26. In its complaint response of 17 July 2025 explained again it had provided its responses based on the information it had at the time. As already noted, this came from the portal, which was based upon the information from the Judge, and HMCTS is not responsible for this being incorrect.

27. HMCTS can only pass on the information it is given by the Judge. If HMCTS had provided Mr A with different information than given to it by the Judge, that would be considered a failing, but if the information it was given was incorrect (as appears to be the case here), HMCTS cannot be found at fault for passing that information on.

28. We will therefore end consideration of this point here.

1. We have carefully considered Mr A’s complaint about HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS). We would like to thank Mr A for bringing this matter to our attention and appreciate this has been a frustrating process for him.

2. Having reviewed the case, it is our decision that for each of the points raised by Mr A, we have seen no indication that anything seriously wrong, or that there is any indication of maladministration or service failure on the part of HMCTS.