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Fact sheet: Damages Claims

Updated 27 February 2024

Applies to England and Wales

The Damages Claims service is an online service allowing registered legal professionals to issue and respond to a claim for damages on behalf of their client on MyHMCTS.

1. Important statistics

The Damages Claims service has:

Issued more than 116,000 claims since its launch in May 2021.

Achieved an average time from claim issue to a directions order of 89 days (12.7 weeks) in 2023.

2. Main outcomes

The service aims to provide legal professionals with an efficient and fast service that’s fully accessible. We’ve achieved several main outcomes so far, including:

• 24/7 access to the digital service
• a self-service system letting you see the latest activity on your claim and notifications throughout to keep you informed on the progress of the claim
• the ability to create, manage and maintain your firm’s MyHMCTS account - no need to contact HMCTS to add or remove users
• the ability to request and receive an interim judgment with subsequent judge’s order for damages
• the ability for a judge to provide standard directions orders on a case after reviewing the digital case file - sometimes referred to as allocation to track (small claims and fast track)
• the ability to record a notice of change on digital claims to come on record as acting for an unrepresented defendant so that the case can proceed online
• an end-to-end service, including the ability to upload evidence in readiness for a hearing, pay a hearing fee and for the judge to draw an order is being tested in 16 early adopter court locations before being rolled out nationally  in the future. The early adopter courts are:
  • Derby Combined Court Centre
  • Nottingham County Court and Family Court
  • Chesterfield County Court
  • Mansfield Magistrates’ and County Court
  • Manchester Civil Justice Centre (Civil and Family Courts)
  • Stockport County Court and Family Court
  • Wigan County Court and Family Court
  • Teesside Combined Court Centre
  • North Shields County Court and Family Court
  • Darlington County Court and Family Court
  • Durham County Court and Family Court
  • Gateshead County Court and Family Court
  • Sunderland County, Family Magistrates’ and Tribunal Hearings
  • South Tyneside County Court and Family Court
  • Newcastle Civil and Family Courts and Tribunals Centre
  • Mid and South East Northumberland Law Courts

3. How the Damages Claims Portal helps legal professionals handle damage claims

Before the Damage Claims service launched, legal professionals relied on a paper process which could be slow and difficult to use (the average time taken from receipt to issue of a paper claim in 2023 was 11.1 days).

The damages service allows claims to be issued immediately upon submission and payment of the court fee. Defences lodged via the portal are immediately visible.

The Damages Claims service allows a claimant’s legal representative to issue a claim and a defendant legal representative to acknowledge and respond to a claim. This includes the completion of direction questionnaires by both sides.

4. Looking ahead

The Damages Claims service will introduce the following additional features for legally represented parties, including:

• The ability to issue a ‘general’ application, facilitate the defendant to reply to the application, if needed, and for a legal adviser or judge to make an order. The journey will allow one or more live applications to be processed at one point in time
• The ability to mark a case as settled or discontinued to enable closure of a court case digitally.
• The ability to digitally manage specialist claims, including PPI
• Roll out of the end-to-end journey for damages to all courts

5. Feedback

The postcode search function makes finding Claimant and Defendant addresses really quick and easy instead of having to copy and paste from our case management system.

The visibility of the case information is really clear.

Navigation around the site is hurdle free.

Overall, it feels like less buttons need to be clicked which is always a good thing.

The data included on this page is drawn from either management information or Ministry of Justice (MOJ) official statistics. Management information reflects the data held on our case management system, and is subject to change. Official statistics are fully quality-assured and form the agreed definitive position.