September 2016 Credit Management magazine

LITIGATION SPECIAL
THE REVOLUTION
WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
YET again I’ve found a helpful new
contact at the Ministry of Justice
(MoJ) to provide the nitty-gritty of the
previous year’s judicial statistics. I
invariably preface the statistics with significant
contemporaneous events, and this year,
for instance, I am delighted to see that the
Government is scrapping the unsatisfactory
Money Advice Service, but not before it
managed to spend £100 million in less than
six years!
However, the event eclipsing all else this
year is the Civil Courts Structure Review (the
Review) by Lord Justice Michael Briggs (LJ
Briggs), commissioned by the Lord Chief
Justice and the Master of the Rolls in July
2015, to review the resolution of civil disputes
in England and Wales, including boundaries
between Civil/Family/Tribunal jurisdictions,
reduced reliance on buildings, and which
judges do what, and where.
The Review was published in two parts:
the Interim Review (IR) in January, and the
Final Review (FR) on 27 July, the very day this
article was due to be delivered. I had banked
on some MoJ-type slippage, but should have
known when LJ Briggs gives a deadline,
he means it! The good news is that I can
now assess the whole Review, as it touches
activities within the statistics.
The Review offers a seismic transformation
of civil litigation and enforcement from an
almost standing start, fuelled by £736 million
of funding, courtesy of the Chancellor’s
2015 Spending Review. Although LJ Briggs
naturally attributes great credit to his compact
team – Mr Justice Stephen Stewart, His
Honour Judge Nigel Bird, District Judge
Christopher Lethem and Richard Goodman
(latterly Clare Galloway) from HMCTS – his
evident grasp of an enormous canvas, and his
enthusiasm for change, shine through every
word.
CLAIMS AND ENFORCEMENT
Total claims are only one percent less
than 2014, but repossession actions and
orders made have each slumped more than
50 percent. The big surprise to me is an
equivalent increase in popularity for warrants
of control, which have returned to 2010
levels, and not due to less judgments being
transferred to the High Court for enforcement,
as the 52,000 Queen’s Bench writs of control
was the second highest figure ever.
The only reason I can offer for warrants
thriving is that more measured and logical
remedies – which I identify below – have failed
to reach fruition due to continued Government
reluctance to provide debtor information to
civil judges and creditors. Disappointingly,
this is not mentioned in the Review, and I can
only conclude that the MoJ has failed to make
LJ Briggs aware of both the strength and the
length of creditor entreaties on the topic.
LJ Briggs brought his own information
twist to the party in the IR, querying whether
there should be a default assumption requiring
judgment debtors to take initial steps to
facilitate enforcement – including asset and
income disclosure – rather than leaving the
creditor to take the initiative. However, in the
FR, LJ Briggs does not feel able to turn this
proposal into a firm recommendation, due
to ‘a mixed response’, whilst accepting the
principle is essentially right. I have a sneaky
feeling that this principle will ultimately bear
fruit, with the prospect of an information
transformation brought about by digitised
systems!
The first remedy urgently needing
government resuscitation is orders to obtain
information, which have dipped 17 percent
below even the rut of 20-22,000 annual
applications into which the remedy has
settled since 2010. Attachment of earnings
is the second candidate, because, although
creditors purchased 26 percent more
attachments in 2015 than the year before,
reforms thrashed out years ago which are
capable of transforming the remedy remain
in mothballs. The third remedy languishing
horribly in the information slow lane is third
party debt orders which, properly resourced,
could become a popular and effective tool in
this digital age.
Finally, on enforcement, for reasons which
continue to baffle me, charging orders have
reduced a further 12 percent, and represent
little more than a quarter of their 164,812
highpoint only seven years ago.
In the IR LJ Briggs expresses real
enthusiasm for the creation of a single
enforcement platform, including some
1. COUNTY COURT
PROCEEDINGS
* Claims
1,717,239 1,552,627 1,586,633
* Mortgage Repossession 123,034 128,522 133,001
* Orders Made
88,602 100,193 123,463
MAIN ENFORCEMENT APP
* Warrant of Control
* Orders to obtain
* Attachment of Earnings
* Charging Orders
* Third Party Debt Orders
Total
REGISTRATION OF
JUDGMENTS * Registered
* Satisfied
* Cancelled
* Searches
3. LITIGATION
3A. PRE-TRIAL NUMBERS
Number of Defences
Small Claims allocations
Fast Track allocations
Multi-Track allocations
Total
3B. TRIAL NUMBERS
A(i) Small Claims
County Court Trials
Total
3C. TRIAL TIMES
3B9(i) From issue to trial
Small Claims
Fast Multi Track
2006 2007 2008
340,078 310,128 294,823
28,642 27,148 30,261
85,328 82,019 73,844
92,933 131,637 164,812
6,555 6,474 7,564
553,536 554,640 571,305
1,105,129 98,580 1,026,531
128,665 128,388 117,471
89,620 85,667 92,122
29,168 29,384 35,276
2006 2007 2008
292,115 338,616 298,796
76,821 96,417 83,928
50,723 50,970 53,255
27,605 26,364 26,720
155,149 173,751 163,903
46,872 53,23 46,519
17,675 18,353 19,916
64,547 71,585 66,435
27 wks 27 wks 29 wks
53 wks 53 wks 52 wks
16
September 2016 www.cicm.com
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