Fact sheet: Online Civil Money Claims
Updated 27 February 2024
Applies to England and Wales
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hmcts-reform-civil-fact-sheets/fact-sheet-online-civil-money-claims
1. Headline figures
The Online Civil Money Claims (OCMC) service has:
- Issued more than 472,000 claims from unrepresented claimants since its introduction in March 2018
- Achieved an average user satisfaction rating of 95% for claimants and 66% for defendants using the service
- Settled 48% of the 10,250 mediation appointments attended in 2023
- Issued 105,509 claims in 2023
- Achieved an average of 9.2 weeks for a directions order to be drawn compared to 29 weeks on paper in 2023
The service was expanded to legal representatives issuing claims against legal representatives up to £25,000 in May 2022. To date, more than 30,000 claims have been issued. In November 2023, the service was expanded so that legal representatives can issue claims up to £25,000 against unrepresented defendants and they are able to respond to claims in both English and Welsh. To date, more than 2,000 of these claims have been issued.
2. Main outcomes
The OCMC service will provide a service which is digital from start to finish for people issuing and responding to claims. We have achieved several main outcomes so far, including:
- reducing the amount of time it takes for a case to be given directions for hearing
- getting more claims through mediation to achieve higher settlement rates and the need for a court hearing
- enabling legal advisers to make case management directions in defended claims up to £1,000 - freeing up judicial time and resulting in cases being dealt with faster
- allowing legal representatives to issue and respond to claims (1 claimant v 2 defendants, 2 claimants v 1 defendant) including claims made against an unrepresented defendant
- improving access to justice by enabling the online service for unrepresented claimants on low income, who can apply for help with paying court fees
- allowing 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 apply for default judgments (county court judgments)
- for cases where both parties have a legal representative, 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. This has been rolled out in 16 early adopter courts nationally and will be rolled out to further locations in the future.
3. How the OCMC project makes issuing or responding to a claim quicker and easier
The OCMC journey offers a streamlined digital process for money claims and has achieved some notable timeliness improvements. It now takes an average of 44 weeks from receipt to first hearing compared to 53 weeks in the non-digital journey and settlement agreements are being reached in an average of 24 calendar days from issue. The service is available 24/7 and users can log on at any time to check the progress of their case.
Defended cases are automatically opted-in to mediation. This allows for quicker resolution of cases.
4. Looking ahead
The Online Civil Money Claims service will look to introduce the following features:
- legal representatives and unrepresented parties will be able to apply and respond to applications to the court for various orders, including applications by consent
- national roll-out of the end-to-end journey for represented parties
- further development of the unrepresented party journey, including the ability to issue claims against 2 defendants and claims with a value of over £25,000.
5. Feedback
“Excellent website, very clear and helpful!”
“Absolutely fantastic service.”
“Found form very easy to use and fill in.”
“The online forms were very easy to complete and, when settled, it was easy to update the claim to reflect this.”
“So very positive. I hope this beta becomes permanent!”
“An entirely positive experience. Each section of the application was clear and easy to use. Progress through the different sections was logical and intuitive.”
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.