2. Ms E complains HMCTS did not consider her availability when setting a court date and wrote to the wrong address when requesting payment for her adjournment application.
3. She says this meant she did not have a fair hearing.
4. Ms E would like answers to points that were not covered, a ‘suitable sum’ in compensation and the £350 court judgement against her to be cancelled.
5. Ms E was involved in a court case with a hearing date set for early August 2022. She told HMCTS she was not available on this date.
6. HMCTS told her she needed to apply for an adjournment. She did this but did not pay the fee because she says she did not know if she needed to.
7. HMCTS wrote to Ms E to ask for payment but sent the letter to the wrong address. By the time she got the letter the hearing had gone ahead, and her case was dismissed because the fee had not been paid.
8. HMCTS apologised for the errors. It said it should have done more to check Ms E’s availability and should have written to her at the right address. It offered to pay Ms E £150. She did not accept because she feels she was denied a fair hearing.
11. Before we decide if we should investigate a complaint, we look at whether there are signs the events complained about had a negative effect on the person that the organisation has not put right. We have done this and we consider HMCTS has already done enough to put right the impact of the events Ms E complains about.
12. HMCTS has accepted two ‘oversights’ in Ms E’s case. First, it said it should have done more to make sure Ms E was available for the date it set for the hearing. Second, it said it should have done more to make sure it sent correspondence to the right address.
13. HMCTS offered Ms E £150 as a goodwill payment to recognise its mistakes and the frustration these caused her.
14. Ms E says the mistakes stopped her from having a fair hearing and a solution to her legal case.
15. There is no dispute that HMCTS made errors. Our role is to decide if HMCTS has done enough to try to put things right for Ms E.
16. We cannot investigate whether HMCTS’s errors affected the outcome of Ms E’s court case. By law (the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967) we have no authority to look at a decision made by a judge.
17. If Ms E believes the judge’s decision may have been different if HMCTS did not make these mistakes, she may wish to get independent legal advice about how to challenge the judge’s decision.
18. We should also explain that HMCTS staff have two separate functions. The first, known as judicial functions, are actions taken on behalf of, or on the orders of, a judge. The second, known as administrative functions, are actions taken as part of HMCTS’s day-to-day operations. By law, we can look only at HMCTS’s administrative actions.
19. HMCTS accepted it should not have set the court hearing on a date when Ms E was unavailable. But setting a court date is a judicial function and HMCTS has no administrative power to change it once it is arranged. Only a judge can change it. All HMCTS could do is let Ms E know how to try to get the date changed by formally applying for an adjournment. The evidence we have seen shows that HMCTS did this. It also passed Ms E’s application to a judge. We would not have expected HMCTS to have done more in this situation.
20. HMCTS’s website clearly says fees may be payable to take a case to court. It says the fee depends on the detail of the case. HMCTS support this information by sending guidance notes to be read with any court applications. Unfortunately, Ms E did not pay the relevant fees for her original application to court or for her adjournment request.
21. We appreciate Ms E found the forms and guidance confusing. On the form she sent requesting an adjournment she said she could not ‘determine if there is a fee required for this application’. But she had responsibility for completing the forms correctly including paying the relevant fees.
22. We note HMCTS did write to Ms E to remind her about the fee for the adjournment request but, in error, wrote to her at the wrong address. We accept that if she had got the letter, it would likely have explained the situation for Ms E. But it was her responsibility to make sure she sent her application correctly in the first place.
23. HMCTS explains Ms E’s hearing went ahead in August and the judge dismissed her claim because she had not paid the hearing or application fees. HMCTS says it was satisfied that when the judge made this decision, they were aware of Ms E’s requests to rearrange the hearing and that HMCTS’s letter had been sent to the wrong address. As we have explained, we have no power to challenge the judge’s decision.
24. Our ‘Principles of Good Administration’ say to get things right organisations should say when mistakes happen, apologise, explain what went wrong and put things right quickly and effectively.
25. We can see HMCTS’s errors caused Ms E some upset and inconvenience.
HMCTS’s offer of £150 to put things right is in line with level 2 of our severity of injustice scale (our scale) which is explained in our ‘Principles for Remedy’. Where an injustice (how someone has been affected when something went wrong) causes a degree of distress, inconvenience or minor pain, our scale says a payment of £100 to £450 is appropriate. As HMCTS offered Ms E £150 and this is within the recommended amount on our scale, we think it has done enough and we are not asking it to do more.
26. We appreciate this is not the outcome Ms E wanted but we hope our fair consideration of her concerns has helped. We thank her for bringing her concerns to us.
1. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has carefully considered Ms E’s complaint about HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS). We have decided that HMCTS has already done enough to put right what went wrong and we are not taking any further action. We appreciate our decision will be disappointing for Ms E.