Transparency data

Chair’s summary – Strategic Engagement Group Meeting 26 November 2019

Published 16 January 2020

1. Introduction

A summary of the discussion at the Strategic Engagement Group (StratEG) meeting held on 26 November 2019 at 102 Petty France. It provides an overview of the presentations and highlights key discussions at the meeting.

Members of the Bar Council, Law Society and Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx) met with HMCTS Strategic Engagement Team and Reform project teams for the latest six weekly update and discussion.

The representatives from the legal professional bodies received an update from each jurisdiction, as well as an in-depth presentation from projects. The projects are either selected on request from the forum’s membership or when projects have timely updates for the group. At this meeting we had presentations about:

• Ministry of Justice’s evaluation of reform
• Royal Courts of Justice (RCJ) & Upper Tribunals project
• Crime Programme transition strategy

2. Evaluation of reform

The MOJ Reform: Overarching Evaluation team explained that the overarching review will look to assess how court and tribunal reforms affect legal professionals and court users. The review will explore three key questions:

• has reform affected outcomes for users?
• has reform changed the ability of users to pursue a case effectively (access to justice)?
• has reform affected the costs incurred by those who use courts and tribunals?

Following this, the team will look at the outcome of cases, access to services and resolution. The aim of the evaluation is to assess the effectiveness of the reformed services and will gather information from a mix of users including professional (including practitioners and judiciary) and public using various techniques to ensure all of those who wish to respond, have the time to do so.

The group were advised that an interim report is currently expected for mid-2021 with the final report currently planned for 2024 and were invited to feedback on the design of the evaluation process which had been outlined to them.

Read more about the MoJ’s evaluation.

3. Royal Court of Justice (RCJ) and Upper Tribunals project

This project has been working since 2015 to enable the online filing and organisation of case papers and assist with online payment of fees. The RCJ and Upper Tribunals Project team updated the forum on CE File digitisation of files project, telling the group about the recent extension to regional Business and Property Courts and Queen’s Bench claims and appeals at the RCJ and finally the future plans to senior courts from January.

The group was told about a recent presentation at the Law Society conference where the team received contacts to feedback about the design of CE File, and members of StratEG were invited to do the same. Since implementation 12,000 new cases had been issued on CE File and over 1,000 users have attended training courses.

Read more about the background of CE file and the guidance available.

4. Crime Programme

Finally, the Crime Programme presented an update about the development of the case management system, Common Platform, detailing the ongoing work for providing an end-to-end service. At present, around 40 magistrates’ courts are already using Common Platform for a small subset of cases referred to court from the single justice procedure.

By the end of the roll-out, all new cases will be handled on Common Platform and Courts Store will no longer be used. There will however be a transition period where we will be running both Common Platform and the current systems, as pre-existing cases will continue to be handled on existing systems through to conclusion.

5. Next meeting

The next meeting is scheduled in January 2020 with presentations due from courts, tribunals and regional tier and Social Security and Child Support projects.

Caroline Olaiya
Head of Strategic Stakeholder Relations
Chair of StratEG