Lord Justice Briggs recommends setting up an online court

A senior judge has recommended the setting up of a new online court for dealing with all monetary claims up to £25,000. This is the key recommendation of a report by Lord Justice Briggs into reforms of the courts system called The Civil Courts Structure Review: Final Report.

Lord Justice Briggs recommends that the court would be designed to be used by people with “minimum assistance” from lawyers with its own set of user-friendly rules.

The review makes a series of recommendations intended to inform the current programme of wider court modernisation being undertaken by HM Courts and Tribunals Service. Among the other proposals, the report recommends there should be a single court as the default court for the enforcement of the judgments and orders of all the civil courts (including the new Online Court). 

It recommends that all enforcement procedures to be digitised, centralised and rationalised.

The report also recommends re-establishing a court-based, out-of-hours private mediation service in County Court hearing centres similar to a system that existed previously.

In signing off his final report, Lord Justice Briggs commented:
“In my view, if the [recommendations] are all substantially implemented, then the essentially high quality of the civil justice service provided by the courts of England and Wales will be greatly extended to a silent community to whom it is currently largely inaccessible, and both restored and protected against the weaknesses and threats which currently affect it.”

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