HM Courts and Tribunals Service

4. Mr A complains about HMCTS’s dealing with his court case between February 2023 and September 2024. Specifically, he complains that HMCTS:

• lost a court file whilst his claim was being transferred from the Civil National Business Centre (CNBC) to Birmingham County Court • did not send out a hearing notice to him for a hearing set on 23 July 2024, and • ignored some of his emails, did not adequately respond to others, and left him waiting between 1-2 hours for some of his calls to be answered.

5. He said that due to this he had to ‘visit the court four times and use the courthouse telephone to get direct access to staff just to seek updates’, and has experienced frustration, financial strain, emotional distress and wasted time.

6. He would like £4,431.72 in compensation.

7. In May and August 2023, HMCTS requested copies of Mr A’s court documents from the CNBC so it could progress his claim. These documents were not received so his claim was delayed until duplicate copies were received.

8. A hearing was set for 23 July 2024, which was later cancelled and heard in September.

Lost Court File and Communication

11. Before we decide if we should conduct a detailed investigation of a complaint, we look at whether there are signs the events complained about had a negative effect which the organisation has not put right. Having done so we have found HMCTS has already done enough to put right the impact of these events.

12. Mr A said that after he submitted a claim to the CNBC, HMCTS lost his court file. He said this caused ‘19 months of delays, uncertainty, and disruption’. He said that during this time HMCTS was unresponsive to his calls and emails and ignored correspondence.

13. HMCTS said that Mr A contacted it many times between February 2023 and February 2024 requesting updates on his case. It said on 16 March 2023 a judge requested that his case was transferred from the CNBC to Birmingham County Court (BCC), but the court files never arrived. It said it chased the CNCB in May and August 2023, but still no court files arrived, so it requested duplicates from Mr A in February 2024. It said the difficulties Mr A experienced whilst trying to contact the CNBC and BCC were due to high volumes of work, which impacted its ability to respond. It said it appreciates ‘that it was frustrating for [Mr A] to have to wait so long to speak to a member of staff’ and that the delays Mr A experienced showed it had fallen short of the standards people should rightly expect.

14. Our Principles of Good Administration: Being Customer Focussed states that ‘public bodies should provide services that are easily accessible to their customers’ and that they ‘should behave helpfully, dealing with people promptly, within reasonable timescales and within any published time limits. They should tell people if things take longer than the public body has stated, or than people can reasonably expect them to take.’

15. We have seen in the evidence provided by Mr A and HMCTS that this was not the case, and that HMCTS took longer than would be reasonably expected to communicate with him about his case and provide updates. We have also seen that by losing his case file and not communicating with him sooner, this caused a delay to his hearing being listed and heard.

16. We have seen in HMCTS’s complaint responses that it apologised for the delays caused by losing his case file, the difficulties he experienced whilst trying to get in touch with the court, and that it didn’t respond to some of his emails. It also offered a goodwill payment of £150.

17. Level 2 on our Guidance on Financial Remedy states that if ‘the person affected has to repeatedly chase the organisation to carry out an action’ and ‘there is a delay of more than a few weeks, up to around one year’ then an organisation should apologise and offer compensation of between £120-£550.

18. When looking at Mr A’s case we believe that the losing of his case file would have led to a delay in his hearing being listed and heard by around one year. This is based on the judge requesting Mr A’s case be referred to BCC in March 2023, which didn’t happen due to the court files being lost, and HMCTS requesting duplicates of the documents from him 11 months later in February 2024.

19. Due to this we believe that HMCTS has already done enough to put right the impact these events had on Mr A.

Hearing Date Changes

20. Mr A said that HMCTS failed to notify him of a hearing that had been set for 23 July 2024, and that he only learnt of this hearing date when he physically visited the court for an update. He said this left him ‘with almost no time to prepare’.

21. HMCTS said that after Mr A’s hearing of 16 May 2024 was adjourned, the judge set a new hearing date of 23 July, ‘however this hearing was rescheduled as the parties were not given enough notice of this hearing date’ because a hearing notice wasn’t sent out. HMCTS said it sincerely apologises for this mistake and that it understands ‘that this must have been frustrating’. HMCTS said that due to this a new hearing date was set for 10 September.

22. The Crown Court Manual states that ‘listing is a judicial responsibility and function’ and that ‘judges are responsible for deciding on the assignment of cases to particular courts and the listing of those cases particular judges’. The Parliamentary Commissioner Act, Schedule 3, 6 and 6A, 1967, which is the law that allows us to consider complaints, says judicial decisions and directions are not within our remit. Due to this, we can not comment on the date Mr A’s hearing was listed for, but we can look to see what HMCTS did once it became aware of the hearing date.

23. Once a judge sets a date for a hearing, it is the responsibility of HMCTS to inform any involved parties of the hearing date. Although there is no guidance stating the timeframe within which HMCTS should do this, we would expect it to do it within a reasonable timescale, so the parties involved have time to prepare. We have seen on this occasion, HMCTS did not send out a hearing notice meaning the involved parties did not have sufficient time to prepare.

24. PHSO Principles of Remedy: Putting Things Right states, ‘where maladministration or poor service has led to injustice or hardship, public bodies should try to offer a remedy that returns the complainant to the position they would have been in otherwise.’ PHSO Guidance on Financial Remedy, Level 1 says, ‘a case will generally be level one if we consider the person affected has experienced a low impact injustice such as annoyance, frustration, worry or inconvenience. This would typically arise from a single (one-off) incidence of maladministration or service failure’ and that in these situations ‘we would generally consider an apology to be an appropriate remedy’.

25. We have seen that once HMCTS became aware it had not sent out a hearing notice to either party, it arranged for the hearing to be moved to the next available date. We have also seen that HMCTS apologised for this mistake.

26. Due to this we believe HMCTS has already done enough to put right the impact of not sending out a hearing notice to Mr A.

27. We recognise that the matters Mr A complained about have been upsetting for him and we hope the explanation of our decision provides some reassurance.

1. We are sorry to hear of the frustration Mr A has experienced whilst dealing with HM Courts & Tribunal Service (HMCTS).

2. We have carefully considered Mr A’s complaint about HMCTS. For each of the points raised in Mr A’s complaint, we have decided HMCTS has already done enough to put right the impact of its mistakes.

3. We have provided a detailed explanation for our reasoning below.