HM Courts and Tribunals Service

4. Mr A complains about HMCTS and the way it handled his appeal: • He submitted an appeal request on 26 May 2024, but it did not put forward his request to the High Court, • He says the Judge never shared their reasoning for refusing his application for appeal • When he raised a complaint, HMCTS said a judge had considered his request and shared their consideration, but Mr A says he never received this information prior to complaining to HMCTS on 28 March 2025, • He believes it did not process his appeal for over a year, until 11 June 2025, when he submitted the appeal application again. As such, it delayed telling him the judge felt his case was outside of their jurisdiction.

• He also suspects the judge did not read the entire appeal application, as HMCTS’ system would only allow him to submit 5 pages when there were 453 pages in total.

5. Mr A also complains about the way HMCTS handled his complaint: • It took more than 10 days to respond, and, • It misunderstood his complaint and assumed he was appealing the Magistrate Court’s original decision on his case, when it was the Crown Court’s decision.

6. As a result of his experience, Mr A says he: • experienced significant and prolonged stress, confusion, and frustration, • experienced ‘emotional distress’ due to the wasted time and effort in getting a response, • was left ‘in limbo’ for over a year, not knowing what was happening with his application and no way of moving forward with his appeal, • spent considerable time and energy repeatedly clarifying his position and gathering evidence to demonstrate HMCTS’ delay, and, • lost trust in the judicial process.

7. As an outcome of his complaint, Mr A would like: • An explanation of what happened, including a verification of his referral, • Acknowledgment of error, • An apology, • Service improvements, and, • £1000 financial compensation.

Complaint background

8. According to Mr A’s appeal application and the Magistrate Court records, he was prosecuted by a Magistrates Court on 10 January 2022 for not self-isolating following a trip abroad in May 2021. It ordered him to pay £2046 by 7 February 2022 and planned to collect this through his earnings.

9. Mr A applied to the Crown Court to appeal the decision, but his application was refused. This was because the Court decided it had been submitted outside the time limit allowed for making such an appeal. Although the Court noted Mr A’s reasons for the delay in making his appeal, it advised that his best course of action would be to apply to state a case.

10. In March 2025, Mr A approached HMCTS about the length of time it was taking to deal with his outstanding application. It appears that, initially, HMCTS misunderstood Mr A’s concerns and believed he was seeking to challenge a court decision. However, by June 2025, Mr A was able to clarify the situation and submitted a new application to state the case.

11. At this stage, HMCTS referred the matter to a Crown Court judge who said that, as Mr A’s application to state a case to the High Court related to decisions made by The Magistrates’ Court, they were not satisfied they had jurisdiction to consider it. The Judge said Mr A would need to apply to the relevant Magistrate’s Court so his application could be considered by a magistrate.

Administrative background

12. To put this complaint, and our decision, into context, it may be helpful to explain more about the process for stating a case. It would also be helpful to explain out limitations when looking at complaints about HMCTS.

13. Different types of cases are dealt with in specific courts and have different routes into the Court of Appeal. In all criminal cases, including Mr A’s, proceedings start in the Magistrates’ Court. In this setting, the case is either heard by magistrates (volunteers from the community with more limited power than a judge) or a District Judge. If a participant in the case disagrees with the Magistrate’s decision, they may be able to appeal to the High Court.

14. Any party to the proceedings may ask for permission to ‘state a case’. This means they can submit a written statement of the facts found by a magistrates’ court for the opinion of the High Court on any question of law or jurisdiction involved. The procedure for stating a case is governed by Part 52 of the Civil Procedure Rules.

15. HMCTS’ role to manage the administration around the Criminal, Civil, and Family Courts and Tribunals in England. However, it is not responsible for the judicial decisions or instructions. Rather it provides support to the Courts while they implement their duties. HMCTS has no administrative authority to challenge, or overturn, a judicial action. The same limitations apply to our office.

HMCTS delayed handling his application to state a case

18. Mr A says he attempted to submit an application to the Crown Court via email to state a case for the High Court on 26 May 2024. However, he says HMCTS failed to grasp that he had submitted an application to ‘state a case’, and this delayed his case.

19. Our investigation has established that Mr A submitted two applications to HMCTS in May 2024, one of which involved a separate matter (an appeal against a decision enforcement action due to be taken against him). However, in error, HMCTS failed to process the application to State the Case.

20. The evidence we have seen appears to show a delay between HMCTS receiving Mr A’s initial application and its processing of his second application. We have made enquiries to try to understand why this was.

21. HMCTS initially told us (and Mr A) that it had not received the first application. However, we were able to share with HMCTS an automated email Mr A had received which confirmed that HMCTS had received that application in May 2024.

22. HMCTS then noted that the attachment to the initial email (which contained Mr A’s supporting reasons and evidence for his application) had likely been too large for its email system to accept (the attachment consisted of 453 pages). However, whilst this may be true (and Mr A has confirmed that he could only attach five pages of the document when he resubmitted it in June 2025), it does not fully explain why HMCTS took no action on the email itself.

23. In a situation like this, we would expect HMCTS to comply with our Principles of Good Administration, specifically our principle for ‘Being Customer Focused’. Under this principle, we expect public bodies, like HMCTS, to be helpful and deal with people promptly.

24. It should have been clear to HMCTS from Mr A’s email that he was asking to state the case. In the circumstances, we would have expected HMCTS to at least respond to Mr A’s email to explain the attachment was not attached (or too large) and suggest an alternative method of delivery. We have seen no evidence HMCTS did this.

25. Had it done so, the outcome would likely have been the same (namely, that Mr A would have been told his application was misdirected and that he should approach the Magistrates’ Court). However, if HMCTS had acted correctly, he would have known what he needed to do much earlier.

26. We have considered Mr A’s involvement in the delay. As part of this, we asked Mr A why he waited so long (between May 2024 and March 2025) to chase the progress of his application. He told us that, at the time, he was aware of long delays in the court system in general so was not overly surprised at the length of time this appeared to be taking. In any event, he had received an automated response to his application so had no reason to believe HMCTS was not actively considering it. We find this to be a reasonable and plausible argument.

27. When we find that things have gone wrong, our next step is to look at how the person making the complaint was affected by this and whether the organisation concerned has done enough to put matters right for them.

28. Mr A told us that the delay in processing his application caused him a great deal of unnecessary stress, confusion, and frustration. He said he was left in legal limbo for over a year, not knowing whether his application had been processed, or dismissed. He said this meant he had no way to move forward with his case or to seek justice through the proper legal channels. This has not only affected his trust in the judicial process but also caused him emotional distress and wasted time and effort in chasing responses that should have been handled promptly and professionally.

29. There is no doubt that HMCTS took longer to process the application than it should have done. However, we cannot say it took longer than Mr A expected. By his own admission and based on his own knowledge of HMCTS’ general processing times, he was not expecting the issue to be dealt with more quickly. He has made clear he was prepared to wait for up to ten months before making enquiries so we cannot say the delay itself was unduly alarming for him.

30. We accept it would come as a shock to learn no action had been taken but, following our conversations with HMCTS, it has agreed to apologise to Mr A for this. Given that, as we say, there was no material effect, we are satisfied this is a suitable remedy for what happened.

31. In arriving at this conclusion, we have referred to our Severity of Injustice scale. This is a tool we use to help us decide what recommendations for remedy to make.

32. Our scale contains six different levels of injustice that a complaint could fall into, which increase in severity. Each level is then linked to a range of the financial amounts we would usually recommend in those circumstances.

33. A case will generally be level one on our scale 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, where the effect on the person complaining is of short duration, and where there are no other adverse effects or ongoing wider impact.  We will usually consider an apology to be an appropriate remedy for these cases.

34. Mr A has expressed doubts on the judge’s suggestion that he return to the Magistrates’ Court with his application to state the case. He says he does not believe the judge had sight of his full 453-page bundle of supporting evidence.

35. Although we cannot comment on the judge’s decision, we can usually look at HMCTS’ administrative responsibilities, which would have been to ensure the judge was provided with the relevant information. However, it would not be proportionate for us to do so in this instance. The evidence shows the judge based their advice on the matter of legal jurisdiction, not on the evidence presented to support the application. We have seen nothing to suggest Mr A’s evidence bundle was relevant to that jurisdictional decision. If Mr A believes otherwise, he may wish to seek independent legal advice on how he may challenge the judge’s position. This is not something we can help him with.

HMCTS’ delayed complaint handling

36. Mr A complains HMCTS took too long to respond to his complaint, as it took more than 10 days to provide a response.

37. HMCTS’ guidance, ‘Complaints procedure’, says it should ‘aim to respond [to complaints] within 10 workings days.’. If a complainant requests a review, they should aim to respond within 10 working days. If they request an appeal, they should aim to respond within 15 working days.

38. Under our Principle of Good Complaint Handling, ‘Being customer focused’, we expect public bodies to deal with complaints promptly, avoiding unnecessary delay, and in line with published service standards where appropriate. Resolving problems and complaints as soon as possible is best for both complainants and public bodies.

39. We can see Mr A submitted his first complaint on 28 March 2025 and HMCTS responded on 24 April. This was longer than 10 working days and it did not acknowledge this or explain why there was a delay of nine working days.

40. Following this, Mr A escalated his complaint on 26 April to a team leader. They responded on 3 June, which was more than 10 working days. This time, they apologised for the delay.

41. Mr A then appealed to HMCTS’ Customer Investigations Team on 5 June and they responded on 19 June, which was within 15 working days and acceptable.

42. Overall, HMCTS did not meet the relevant standards when it delayed responding to Mr A on 24 April and 3 June. This resulted in 24 extra working days that he had to wait, outside of the standard waiting time.

43. This caused an impact that matches our description of a level one injustice in our guidance for financial remedy. We describe a level one injustice as one where the person affected experiences distress, worry, annoyance of the sort a healthy adult would be expected to deal with on a regular basis, without external support and which does not impact said person’s day to day functioning for a short duration. In these situations, we consider an apology to be an appropriate remedy.

44. HMCTS have apologised for the delay, and there is no indication at all from Mr A’s correspondence with HMCTS that the delays were causing him any particular distress at the time. As such, we consider HMCTS’ apology to be a proportionate remedy, considering he could have reduced the delay had he followed up HMCTS sooner.

1. We are sorry to hear about his stressful experience with the Courts regarding his appeal and request to ‘state a case’. We can appreciate it has taken a lot of time, and it is understandable that he would have felt like he was in limbo.

2. Having looked at Mr A’s case, we have decided not to consider it further. We consider HMCTS has resolved the issue relating to delays processing Mr A’s application to ‘state a case’. While it delayed responding to his complaint, it apologised and we consider this sufficient to remedy the complaint handling. Finally, we found no indications HMCTS was responsible for Mr A’s case not being heard in the High Court, as this was a decision made by a Judge and therefore outside of our remit.

3. We appreciate why this complaint is important to Mr A and we will explain our decision in more detail below. We hope our explanation provides him with reassurance about how carefully we have considered his complaint before reaching our decision.