Civil justice does not always fail in a dramatic way. Sometimes it fails by making people wait 27 working days before a basic application even starts moving.
HMCTS has updated its Civil Business Centre performance data, giving court users a clearer picture of how long routine civil work is taking. The figures show paper new claims taking four working days before processing begins. Help with Fees applications take 10. General applications take 27. Consent applications take 11 weeks from start to finish. Referrals to a judge take 48 working days before an order is made.
Most civil litigation is not grand commercial warfare. It is debt, housing, consumer claims, small business disputes, enforcement, routine applications and orders people need before they can move on. Delay may look administrative from the outside but to the person waiting, it can mean unpaid money, stalled enforcement, a disputed judgment hanging over them or a business problem getting worse by the week.
The Civil Business Centre deals with high-volume court work. It is meant to process claims and applications at scale. When the system works, that scale helps. When it slows down, the delay feels remote and difficult to challenge. You cannot negotiate with a queue.
The data also shows the gap between paper and digital work. Online acknowledgment of service is processed on the day it arrives. Paper takes five working days. Online judgment entry is automated. Manual paper judgment requests take 10 working days. The message is clear enough: digital civil justice is faster where it works and where people can use it.
Litigants in person, small businesses, older users, disabled users and people without easy digital access may still rely on paper or need support. A court system cannot become quicker only for people fluent in online forms. The rule of law should not depend on broadband, confidence and a working printer.
For lawyers, these figures are useful in client care and expectation management. Clients often assume delay means their solicitor is doing nothing. Published timings help explain which parts are waiting on the court. They also help firms manage expectations, plan next steps and avoid promising speed the system cannot deliver.
Although publishing data does not resolve delay, it does make delay harder to hide. And once out in the open and the music faced, easier to fix.
Author: TOF
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