System over burdened, antiquated and in crisis

ANTIQUATED, over burdened and a system in crisis these appear to be the preliminary conclusions drawn by the Working Group on a Courts Commission in relation to administration of the courts.

The group found crisis management in many offices; staff with responsibility but no authority; lack of resources, lack of training schemes and lack of information technology.

The commission is looking at all offices in the court system. In this second report, it considers offices of the High Court but says the problems are relevant to other courts.

It highlights specific areas:

. The Accountant's Office has a staff of 10 and a monthly income of £10-£12 million but operates a manual accounting system. "Letters are typed on a typewriter which was acquired from another office just over a month ago. The only problem with this is that the typewriter is missing two keys!"

According to the report there is no time to plan work because this system is so time consuming. There is about £1.2 million in uncollected costs which the office does not have the time or resources to seek payment of. The report adds that "the only reason this office is able to function at all is because of the dedication of the staff who work there".

. One of the Taxing Masters, who act on legal costs, has for "some considerable time" sought a photocopier, a word processing system and the removal of 50 year old bills of costs to the National Archives from an assistant registrar's office.

. The Examiner's Office had 2,207 cases pending in July 1995 and it would take over 20 years to clear this backlog even at the current rate of processing at least 100 cases a year.

Since the appointment of the current Examiner a "very serious and sustained effort" was made to address several problems including office systems more appropriate to the 19th than the 20th century.

In 1986 the Examiner's Office got its first piece of technology, an electric typewriter. Six years later it got a word processor and in 1993-95 four additional word processors/personal computers. The office now has five word processors and an electric typewriter.

The commission also recommends that the rules committees, which determine the procedures to be followed in each court, should be "active vehicles" for introducing improvements in the courts system and should have available to them the resources from the proposed courts service.

The establishment of a courts service, a single management body to run the courts, was proposed in the commission's first report.