Transparency data

Strategic Engagement Group Meeting – Chair’s Summary – 5 March 2024

Published 22 March 2024

Applies to England and Wales

1. Introduction

This document summarises the discussion of the Strategic Engagement Group (StratEG) meeting held on 5 March 2024. The meeting was held online.

Members of the Bar Council, Law Society and Chartered Institute of Legal Executives met representatives of HMCTS and Ministry of Justice (MoJ) for the latest quarterly meeting.

The meeting included verbal updates covering:

• Operational and strategic overviews
• Reform Programme priorities
• Video Hearings Service

A presentation covered:

• Small Claims: integrating mediation into the court process

2. Operational and strategic overview

HMCTS is focusing on setting strategy and developing a new business plan outlining priorities, including to:

• perform at our best and provide quality services to the people that need them
• deliver the final phase of the Reform Programme and fulfil its original vision
• create a stable environment so we can continue to improve at a steady pace
• live our values and support our people, wherever they are and whatever they do, to provide joined-up services.

HMCTS is continuing to make performance improvements to the business centres to ensure work flows effectively into local courts and is showing significant improvements.

The Private Law Pathfinder pilot is being extended into South East Wales in April and the Private Law reformed service will recommence operations in Swansea from mid March.

In preparation for the introduction of the Illegal Migration Act, the immigration and asylum chambers are introducing various measures being implemented to help manage high caseloads.

Up to 3,500 cases have been processed by the Employment Tribunal early adopter sites and will soon be expanded to include all cases made up of a litigant in person, claimant and represented respondent.

In Crown Courts, the proof of concept involving Case Coordinators, in post since January and nearing the end of their induction period, will run until mid-2025. 

The Operational Performance Rules Committee (OPRC) which was launched in June 2023, has a focus on building an understanding of the pre action landscape and their current focus is setting up a subcommittee structure. The OPCR met last month to discuss a work programme, subcommittee recruitment opportunities, and a data landscape review.

3. Reform Programme update

Following a review of the Reform Programme in late 2023, changes were required to take into account operational performance, whilst maintaining the good progress made in reforming the justice system.

For Common Platform, releases 2 and 3 have been removed from the programme. Standalone functionality releases will continue to enhance its performance and the Digital Case System will be retained in the Crown Court. Common Platform updates will be delivered by 2025.

Reforms in Civil and Family Private Law are the largest and most complex in the programme. As a result, the completion date is extended for all development for the overall programme from March 2024 to March 2025. Implementation activity will continue throughout 2025 for civil reform.

4. Video Hearings Service

An update on the Video Hearings Service (VHS) advised that a national VHS rollout in the Civil, Family and Tribunal jurisdictions is planned for October 2024, subject to the transition to a new supplier.

This was followed by a discussion with members on ways in which the VHS team can engage with legal professionals further and ways in which communications can be widely circulated. 

In crime, the team is aiming to expand VHS into an additional 2 or 3 hearings in each list as part of the Chester pathfinder, which has been running since late September 2023.

5. Small Claims: integrating mediation into the court process

A presentation introducing the Civil Automatic Referral to Mediation (CARM) highlighted the project’s progress.

Mediators have been trained to carry out live mediations under the current voluntary referral process and will be able to manage the service once it becomes mandatory.

Work is ongoing to improve the technological aspect of managing increased mediation referrals and a mediation management tool has been developed.

A pilot practice direction is anticipated to commence in spring 2024 and will last for approximately two years. The project will come into effect for cases issued after the enforce date. Possible phased implementation of the scheme whilst process changes are being carried out are subject to confirmation. 

6. Reform programme – jurisdictional updates

Written jurisdictional updates were provided to the group.  

6.1 Crime

As of 18 February 2024, 1,416,210 cases have been accepted onto Common Platform.

As a result of the recent rebalancing of priorities for the Reform Programme, Common Platform releases 2 and 3 are to be descoped. The focus for the remainder of the Programme is to reduce technical debt, stabilise the platform, and deliver remaining features.

Police Single Justice Procedure rollout for forces in South East and Wales region started in December 2023 and a further rollout is planned for the near future.

6.2 Future hearings

Work is ongoing with Vodafone to refine features on the Video Hearings Service to ensure the platform is accessible to all users ahead of national roll at the latter half of 2024.  

Teesside Combined Court Centre is piloting the VHS platform with three prisons in the North-East. The pilot started in early February 2024 and will last for three months.

The Chester Pathfinder recommenced in early February 2024 after a pause of 9 weeks.

6.3 Civil

Currently over 478,000 Online Civil Money Claims (OCMC) have been issued by unrepresented claimants.

Legal representatives can also use the service to issue claims up to £25,000 and to date more than 32,000 claims have been issued.

The service was expanded to allow an unrepresented defendant to respond to a claim issued by a legal representative, in either English or Welsh.

In November 2023, HMCTS expanded the services for legal representatives to enable digital progression of a case. The features have initially been released to three early adopter county courts to test before being rolled out nationally.

6.4 Family

In August 2023, the Private Family Law Service paused accepting new applications in Swansea due to issues with the digital system. Since then, the project has held in-depth analysis sessions to review the service and identify areas to apply fixes.

The project is now working towards re-commencing accepting new applications in mid March 2024. The project successfully entered public beta on 30 January 2024 and to date 695 applications have been issued of which 92 have been since entering public beta.

Once the service is working as intended in all early adopter sites, it will be nationally rolled out to the remaining courts.

6.5 Tribunals

Social Security and Child Support released an integrated Scheduling and Listing solution into the early adopter site in Cardiff in March 2023. The approach for national rollout is being developed based on the experience of the early adopter site.

The Immigration and Asylum Chamber continues to focus on delivering IT change required to support implementation of Nationality and Borders Act 2022. The project team will work with stakeholders to deliver the priority measures, including the Accelerated Detained Appeals and Expedited Judicial Process in the Upper Tribunal. The release date is to be confirmed.

In December 2023, the Welsh version of case progression was released for the Employment Tribunal early adopter sites. This allows the Litigant in person to interact with the Tribunal using the customer facing portal to submit applications and correspondence.

At the end of January 2024 the case types in Bristol and Glasgow Employment Tribunal offices were expanded. The case types will be able to be bought to the Employment Tribunal via the CitizenUI reform portal following this expansion.

In early February 2024, the project released the bundles feature allowing both respondents and claimants to upload their bundle of documents for the tribunal before the hearing via the MyHMCTS/Citizen UI portals.

7. Next meeting

The next meeting will be on 4 June 2024.