I haven’t blogged for a few weeks. Some may
say that’s a good thing – I’d certainly like to think so!
The holiday season seems to get longer each
year and brings its disruptions, which we all welcome at some stage hopefully,
even if we pay for it before and after.
Then there are the unwelcome distractions – the unnecessary problems that just devour
time and energy – the irritations we could well do without.
For me as a litigation lawyer, many of those
are down to our ravaged court service – not the individuals within it but the beleaguered
and increasingly impotent sum of those wretched parts.
As just one example I’d like to share with as many
people who care enough to read it the text of a letter I sent to Northampton
County Court (the online and bulk claims centre) today in answer to what I
would describe as a wet and evasive response to my latest complaint about their
handling of one of our current cases:
“Thank you for your letter of 4
September.
The summary at your third
paragraph is broadly correct. What it
omits to mention is the initial delay of a month to process our application for
a simple consent order - for it was submitted at the end of May 2014.
Altogether it took eight weeks
for you to deal, by a process of (wrongful) rejection, with a simple consent
order for payment of a substantial sum of money – important to a commercial
operation – that would generally be expected to be paid within fourteen days.
Let me observe at this point in
case it does not dawn on anybody in Northampton that this sort of thing has a
real impact on industry and commerce in this country. The sort of delays that you are generating at
your office, as are Salford and other courts, are depriving people of a legal
remedy and enhancing the risk of business failures. Please escalate that observation to people
who might persuade others to do something about it.
After 13 July you then took
nearly three weeks to acknowledge our letter complaining about rejection. It then took another three weeks plus for the
matter to be dealt with.
We have come to expect when we
complain about delays at courts that the recipient will look keenly for an
opportunity to say that the problem was “judicial” and not administrative. We have seen this in the fourth paragraph
with your explanation that “court staffs (sic) are not legally trained”.
We don’t accept that this was a
judicial decision. Why would a qualified
district judge make so bizarre an observation as that it was not clear whether
the claim had been served (after filing online, the fact of a defence having
been filed, etc) if he did not have the file in front of him. That suggests to us an administrative failure
– another one.
I am not convinced the
explanation is high volumes of work.
Probably more pertinent are low volumes of resource. We have sympathy with individual people who
work in your offices but this is a major problem and we cannot let it pass
simply because it means decrying the efforts of those who are probably doing
their best in difficult circumstances.
The plain fact of the matter is
that the service is not good enough. It
is far from it. Over thirteen weeks – a
quarter of a year - to seal a judgment for an agreed sum of about £30,000 in
terms endorsed by both parties’ solicitors is simply atrocious.
The points I raised did not need
“clarifying”. If you mean to suggest that they have been satisfactorily answered
then I have to tell you - no, they haven’t.
There is nothing here to
compensate for the delay, reassure us for the future or give any indication
that people within the Court Service recognize that it cannot go on.
How can that be achieved
please? A willingness to meet some
wasted costs at this end, without quibbling over pennies as the Court Service
invariably does when the subject is raised, would be one element of a
successful response to this complaint.”
I’m not
hopeful. At best I expect to receive notification that if I want to complain
then….etc – as if I’d just so far hinted that we might be wondering whether or
not to say something.
At the next
stage some clever trousers, possibly sporting an OBE or similar, will be wheeled
on to deliver a lecture about how judicial decisions are only vulnerable to
appeal and we must….(yawn).
Nobody will
write and say “You’re right – we’re sorry – we agree something must be done”.
But,
seriously – it must. Tell them.
