Transparency data

Chair’s Summary – Strategic Engagement Group Meeting 12 January 2021

Published 1 February 2021

1. Introduction

A summary of the discussion of the Strategic Engagement Group (StratEG) meeting held on 12 January 2021. This meeting was held by video, rather than face-to-face due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Members of the Bar Council, Law Society and Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx) met with the jurisdictional leads for the HMCTS Reform Programme and the HMCTS Corporate Relations Team for the latest 6-weekly update and discussion.

2. Court reform

The group received an update from each jurisdiction including on the impact of the pandemic on project delivery, a presentation on project-level reform evaluation and an update on MyHMCTS.

The reform plan update confirmed that the common platform roll-out was in progress with the next early adopter sites in the South West (Bristol Crown Court and Bristol Magistrates’ Court) in January. Divorce project closure will be at the end of April, family public law in July and Immigration & Asylum Chamber in September. Scheduling and listing pilot commenced on 11 January in the civil and family jurisdictions at Oxford Combined Court. The flexible operating hours evaluation report awaits ministerial approval for publication. Video hearings project is continuing. The 4th Courts and Tribunals Service Centre (CTSC) is due to open in Salford in March.

The update from future hearings advised the meeting that the video hearings service is in use in the property, employment and tax tribunals, and expanding to more tribunal jurisdictions with plans to bring it into use in the civil and family jurisdictions. There has been judicial support for the first scheduling and listing (S&L) pilot on 11 January 2021 in the civil and family jurisdictions at Oxford Combined Court. The project continues work with the supplier to develop and configure list assist, the S&L tool. The flexible operating hours final evaluation report awaits ministerial approval for publication.

In crime, common platform is live at Derby and Chesterfield Magistrates’ Courts. As stated above, common platform will go-live in the next early adopter (EA) sites in the South West (Bristol Crown Court and Bristol Magistrates’ Court) in January 2021. Consideration is also being given to launching further EAs in the North East, South East, London, the North West and Wales, anticipated in early 2021. Work for onboarding defence practitioners continues to be reviewed and enhanced to better support the process. DVLA continue to process single justice procedure (SJP) prosecutions and have now introduced all offences using common platform. A more co-ordinated approach has been agreed in terms of national roll out of police and non-police prosecutors (NPPs) onto the common platform.

The update from civil confirmed that the online civil money claims (OCMC) telephony transition into Stoke CTSC is complete and the digital facility is in operation. CTSC teams are taking all calls. Revised opening hours have been published on GOV.UK. The unspecified claims service has been re-named ‘damages claims’ as that better reflected the project’s purpose. Private beta has been extended to 412 firms. The issues of claims have been developed up to point of response. Work is progressing on who can access the service and when. The next stage will ‘go-live’ in April 2021.

The update from tribunals advised the group that submit your appeal (SYA) is live to progress universal credit cases digitally up to point of ready to list. In respect of manage your appeal (MYA), the project is working on digitalising ‘edge cases’; these included cases where an appellant is aware of certain evidence, death of the appellant, or similar unusual circumstances. The project is working with judges on decision notices for employment support allowance (ESA). User acceptance will be in February 2021.

The Immigration and Asylum Chamber (IAC) project is working with the Royal Courts of Justice (RCJ) project and the upper tribunal (UT) on an enhanced bundling tool to reduce the time it currently requires for the CTSC to prepare the paperwork from the Crown Court Digital case system (CCD) for the UT. The projects are also looking to provide the UT judiciary CCD access to see any information not included in the CCD case bundle.

Royal Courts of Justice and upper tribunals project – the technical release of CE-File took place on 26 October with the next release scheduled for 29 March 2021.

Discussions have been held with the jurisdictions and Thomson Reuters (TR) on the development of the conflict of interest requirement. The jurisdictions have fed back information to TR with a requirement per jurisdiction.

3. Presentations from reform projects

The group received a presentation on project-level reform evaluation strategy. HMCTS has established an evaluation function to conduct reform project-level evaluations. Evaluations vary from monitoring to large scale evaluation. Whilst all projects should be monitored, some benefit from large scale evaluation. Preliminary discussions with internal stakeholders, and initial assessments, identified areas and projects that will benefit from robust evaluation during the next phase of reform.

Surveys and interviews with user groups, including representatives from legal professionals, will be conducted in early 2021, with findings available in Spring/Summer 2021.

The group also received an update on MyHMCTS – the online case management facility for legal professionals.

There had been service mandations in financial remedy and probate with good engagement from stakeholders. Guidance had been updated on GOV.UK. Mandation of probate services is complete. The new functionality providing additional services for professional users, including share a case, which facilitated digitally sharing a case with others, and multi-factor authentication. Both services are live. The project was looking to extend to most services and to professional users.

Journey/service in divorce and financial remedy is due to go live shortly. Notice of change was being developed which would facilitate one firm being swapped for another. The new releases would occur in the next few months.

4. Next meeting

The next meeting is scheduled for 23 February 2021 with a presentation due from the HMCTS Family Public Law (FPL) project on FPL national roll out.

Caroline Olaiya
Head of Corporate Relations
Chair of Strategic Stakeholder Engagement Group