A single civil court?

In its response to the Government’s consultation paper on the benefits of creating a single civil court, the Law Society addressed the question of economics. It pointed out that the consequences of the introduction of the CPR was that by extending the jurisdiction of the county courts, the volume of civil work in the High Court fell dramatically. The number of claims issued in the Queen’s Bench Division has fallen by more than 80% since 1999 and overall there has been a decrease of more than 33% in the total number of claims issued in the High Court. However, the cost of running the High Court has not fallen in the same period. In 2001–02 the High Court operated at a loss of £54m. Unification of the High Court and county courts should, therefore, enable the courts’ resources to be used more effectively. This should cuts costs, reduce delay and enable better resourcing of the civil justice system, to enable maintenance and modernisation to be carried out. At present, data is available which depicts the annual income and expenditure of the county courts and High Court individually. This data is very helpful in that it shows the extent to which the excess of income over expenditure in the county courts is used to offset the shortfall of income over expenditure in other areas, and particularly the High Court. Currently, there is a policy that the civil justice system should be virtually self-funding. In a single civil court it is, therefore, vital that there should continue to be a facility to record appropriate data so as to identify whether or not one or more areas of the court’s work is being ‘sponsored’ by another. Apart from the overall savings that a unified civil court would bring by reducing overheads and allowing for more efficient allocation of resources, there would also be a number of individual savings. Removing duplication of procedures should remove the need for training and the need for two different systems for solicitors and barristers. There should also be savings from having one set of court forms rather than two, and from having a single IT system.