Statistics on the use of language services in courts and tribunals - January 2012-December 2013
The report is released by the Ministry of Justice and produced in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.
Documents
Details
Introduction
The data presented in this bulletin are the face to face language services provided to HM Courts & Tribunals Services (HMCTS) and National Offender Management Service (NOMS), covering requests for services made and completed between 30 January 2012 and 31 December 2013. These services are supplied under a contract with Capita Translation and Interpreting (TI); formerly known as Applied Language Solutions (ALS). The bulletin covers courts in England and Wales, all UK tribunals not transferred to devolved governments, NOMS prisons and MoJ and NOMS HQ.
The statistics in this publication focus on four main areas:
-
The number of completed language services requests, broken down by requester type (criminal court, tribunal, civil and family), language and region;
-
The ‘success rate’ of completed requests (which is calculated as the number of completed requests which are either fulfilled or the customer does not attend, as a proportion of all completed requests excluding those cancelled by the customer) ;
-
The number of complaints made (and complaint rate) relating to languages services requests broken down by courts and tribunals; language and region
-
The number of “off contract” bookings made broken down by requester type.
Key findings
-
Overall completed requests for language services increased by 43,500 from 118,800 requests in 2012 to 162,300 requests in 2013.
-
The success rate for 2013 decreased slightly by 0.5 percentage points, from 90.6% in 2012 to 90.1% in 2013.
-
Q4 2013 success rate was 93.4% - well above annual 2013 rate (90.1%), but slightly below Q3 2013 rate (93.6%).
-
During 2013, only 4.1% of completed requests had a complaint against them, an improvement on 2012 when the complaint rate was 4.8%.
-
The Q4 2013 complaint rate was 2.9% - the lowest for any quarter in the two year period.
-
Total ‘off-contract’ bookings continued to decline quarter on quarter. In Q4 2013, 900 ‘off-contract’ bookings were made by all courts and tribunals compared with 1,300 bookings in Q3 2013 and 2,900 in Q2 2013.
The bulletin was produced and handled by the ministry’s analytical professionals and production staff. Pre-release access of up to 24 hours was granted to the following persons: Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice; Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister for the Courts and Legal Aid; Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister for Prisons and Rehabilitation; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, Minister of State for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims; Permanent Secretary; Director General, Finance and Corporate Services, Corporate Performance Group; Director General, Transforming Justice, Corporate Performance Group; Director General, Criminal Justice Group; Director of Analytical Services; Deputy Director, Interpreters Project; Procurement Manager, Ministry of Justice Procurement; two policy officials, Intermediaries, Disclosure and Interpreter Policy; Chief Statistician; Head of News; Chief Press Officer – Criminal Justice Desk; two Press Officers; two Special Advisors; four Private Secretaries and six Assistant Private Secretaries.