3. Mr E complains about the length of time HMCTS took to process his C100 application, which led to a delay in an order being amended.
4. As a result, Mr E says this impacted on the contact he had with his children and caused him stress which has affected his mental health.
5. As an outcome Mr E would like service improvements and financial remedy in the sum of £5000.
6. Mr E submitted a C100 application to the Family Court on 9 August regarding contact with his children.
7. There was a delay of around six and a half weeks in his application being dealt with. Mr E said this meant the existing order that was in place could not be amended as the relevant hearing had not taken place. Mr E said that without the delay, it is probable that the relevant hearing would have taken place and the contact would have been amended sooner.
What Mr E told us
11. Mr E told us he submitted his application on 9 August.
12. As he did not hear back from the court, he contacted it on 24 September to check on his application. He told us he was informed that his application had not been processed due to an error made by the Legal Advisor.
13. He said the Legal Advisor had stored the application in the wrong location and therefore it was not picked up by the team to be processed. This led to a six and a half week delay.
14. He told us that this impacted on the contact he had with his children as the application was to amend an existing order. The delays meant that the current order was still in place and that the required hearing could not take place.
What HMCTS said
15. Mr E complained to HMCTS on 24 September.
16. It provided a first stage reply on 1 October. It said that it could see that Mr E had filed his application on 9 August and that no action had been taken since.
17. It said it spoke with the team who dealt with processing the application and that it had searched the work inbox for his application. It said that an error had been made by the Legal Advisor.
18. When the Legal Advisor made the order, it was stored in the wrong location and therefore was not picked up by the team to be processed.
19. It apologised for the delays the error caused and said that it had asked the team to draw and serve the order as a matter of urgency, and it confirmed that the order had been sent out by first class post.
20. Mr E responded to HMCTS on 10 October as he was unhappy with the reply.
21. HMCTS provided a review stage reply on 16 November. It acknowledged the error again and apologised that Mr E had to chase for an update to then discover that no action had been taken.
22. It looked at what went wrong and explained again that the order had been saved in the wrong place.
23. It said that it had now introduced a new system where each application is checked daily for an outcome from the Legal Advisor and chased immediately if not received.
24. It also said that it could see that the Legal Advisor would next be considering the case on 18 November, and that Mr E would receive directions in the post within 10 working days.
25. Mr E was still unhappy and responded to the review reply on 19 November. HMCTS provided a final appeal stage reply on 6 December.
26. It apologised again for the error and based on the details of the complaint, offered him a goodwill ex-gratia payment of £100. It acknowledged that it was clear that if had Mr E not chased for an update, he would have experienced a longer delay.
Our view
27. Mr E told us that he had to chase HMCTS to get an update about his C100 application as he had heard nothing from the court since submitting it.
28. While there is no specific guidance or timeframes in place for processing the applications, we expect organisations to act in line with our Principles of Good Administration. These say that organisations should be customer focused, meaning that they should: ‘behave helpfully, dealing with people promptly, within reasonable timescales and within any published time limits. They should tell people if things take longer than the public body has stated, or than people can reasonably expect them to take.’ It does not appear that this happened in Mr E’s case, and this caused an avoidable delay of around six weeks. We appreciate the delay caused Mr E distress.
29. We can see that HMCTS acknowledge the error it made in processing Mr E’s C100 application.
30. We have considered the impact Mr E says he suffered as a result. He said he was unable to see his children and that he suffered from stress.
31. We have also considered HMCTS’ own Complaint Handling Guidance, in particular the section on considering financial redress and ranges of appropriate payment.
32. We can see that HMCTS had reached a reasonable offer in line with the examples provided within that guidance, which we feel adequately reflects any stress and inconvenience Mr E experienced. We understand that Mr E was upset as the delay meant the order to see his children could not be amended, however HMCTS told us that the application was dismissed. We would never be able to say whether this outcome would have been any different based on the delay as this was ultimately a judicial decision and not a guaranteed outcome of the application.
33. We find that the £100 is reasonable, and it is in line with our own guidance on financial remedy. This states that a level two injustice is when something has gone wrong that has had relatively low impact on the person affected and has resulted in a degree of stress and inconvenience for a short period of time.
34. HMCTS have also made service improvements to ensure this kind of error does not occur again. It provided us with evidence of the updated job cards to demonstrate this and we are satisfied this has been reflected on adequately.
35. We understand that the error HMCTS made would have been frustrating and stressful at the time. Taking into account all the evidence, we consider that HMCTS has resolved Mr E’s complaint satisfactorily and has done enough to put this right.
1. We have carefully considered Mr E’s complaint about HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS). We appreciate that Mr E has suffered from stress during his application process, and we are sorry to hear about his experience.
2. In considering the evidence submitted to us, we can see that there was a delay in HMCTS processing his C100 application. In our view it has provided sufficient remedy to put right the impact of this error.