Civil court cases still facing major delays

Huge delays remain in cases going to civil courts across England and Wales, new research from the Association of Consumer Support Organisations (Acso) has revealed.

Out of 7,500 cases examined by Express Solicitors on behalf of Acso, the mean time taken for small claims to go to trial in the second quarter of this year was 50.6 weeks.

And of those cases, 326 were multi-track claims – the time taken for those to go to trial increased by 1.2 weeks on average, totalling a circa 79.3 week waiting period.

To compare, the mean waits pre-Covid-19 pandemic were 31.1 and 60.9 weeks respectively.

“Access to justice is still hugely delayed, therefore access to justice is still being denied,” Acso executive director Matthew Maxwell Scott said.

“It takes a very long time indeed for the court to hear a case.”

Slight improvement

Although delays remain, the data further showed the overall time in multi-track cases going being heard had fallen by 11 days in the past 12 months, from an average of 353 days in 2022/23 to 341 days in 2023/24.

However, Scott said that civil justice, compared to criminal justice, was where “most citizens access the law” and its “performance has been particularly dire for many years”.

Regionally, the south east was worst-performing, with people waiting around 423 days to have their case heard.

In the south west, the average wait time was 383 days.

And, in terms of the best performing regions, the average wait times in the north east and east Midlands was 296 days.

Scott stressed the wait times were a “universal complaint” from “every single one” of Acso’s members and the Ministry of Justice “must work much harder to reduce the backlog by improving court infrastructure and processes to improve access to justice for UK citizens”.

Government request

Express Solicitor chief executive James Maxey said claimants “deserve much better” and felt that court’s continued use of paperwork and postage instead of going digital was partly to blame for the delays.

He also noted that “calling the Civil National Business Centre is made as difficult as possible” when working to chase progress on claims on behalf of the claimants.

Maxey said: “This is not an efficient system that is fit for purpose for use by our clients.

“One would hope that the incoming government will recognise the shortcomings and afford the civil justice system the urgent attention that it desperately needs.”

Scott added: “The data underlines that there is a very long road ahead for the new government to rescue civil justice.

“We hope the new Justice Select Committee will look into this with urgency. The previous committee’s inquiry into the operation of the civil courts was derailed by the general election, giving no time for MPs to hold ministers and officials to account.”