Accredited official statistics

Sankey Case Progression Tool and Guide

Published 3 September 2020

1. Introduction to Tool

As part of our wider work on improving data visualisation and accessibility, we have developed a Sankey tool of civil case progression. This tool visualises annual statistics on civil county court claims as they progress through the County Court system in England and Wales. These are split by claim type.

The figures in the tool show the number of claims reaching each stage (claim, defence, allocation, hearing and judgment) of all claims issued in the corresponding year. This differs from the workload datasets, which show the number of defences, allocations, and hearings that take place in a given quarter, regardless of when the claim was issued. The tool provides users with the capability to:

• Visually see the case progression of county court cases
• Observe data at a lower level of detail than previously published, e.g. volumes of cases that did not have a defence, allocation, hearing or judgment.

2. The data visualisation tool

The tool can be found here:

https://moj-analytical-services.github.io/Civil_Justice_Statistics_Sankey/

3. Notes and caveats of the tool

3.1 General

This tool will continue to be updated with annual figures in the second CJSQ publication of the following year (e.g. annual figures for 2018 will be added to the tool in the CJSQ Apr – Jun 2019 release).

Allocations, hearings and judgments are labelled with suffixes of i, ii, iii etc. This is due to the set-up of the tool, where nodes cannot be named the same as other nodes. Therefore, these names simply refer to allocations, hearings and judgments respectively, and do not differ.

Since the County Court Money Claims Centre took over reporting of unspecified money claims in Q2 2012, the proportion of personal injury claims against the total unspecified money claims increased, due to improved recording.

Mortgage and landlord possession data has not been included as part of this tool.

3.2 Rounding and totals

Individual totals are rounded to the nearest 10. Furthermore, overall totals (e.g. total claims) may not add to the sum of their parts.

The size of the initial claims node does not change, however the totals in the node and subsequent nodes do, depending on filters applied. To check totals at each node, hover over the node of interest.

3.3 Revisions

As this tool is based on a case progression model, at each revision, historic years will be revised as more cases progress through the county court system. Due to data revisions, totals may not match exactly to historical CJSQ case progression figures, but these differences are marginal (<0.1%).

3.4 Judgments

‘No Judgment’ means the claim has been privately settled, withdrawn by the claimant, or has had successful mediation.

Judgment outcomes can lead to enforcements and warrants, which are not currently included in the tool.

Judgment (viii) is also known as default judgment.

4. How to send us your feedback

We welcome any comments you have about the data visualisation tool, including your views on how the tool can be improved, e.g. are there better ways of presenting the information or certain aspects of it?

Enquiries and feedback should be directed to Civil and Administrative Justice Statistics using the details below:

Email: CAJS@justice.gov.uk

or

Carly Gray
Head of Civil, Family and Administrative Statistics
Justice Statistics Analytical Services
Ministry of Justice 3rd Floor
10 South Colonnade
London
E14 4QQ