H.M.C.T.S. Breach of FOIA - The County Court Hearing Centres species cases

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Ministry of Justice should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Ministry of Justice,

H.M.C.T.S. Breach of FOIA - The County Court Hearing Centres species cases

The following FOI request put in on 31 October 2016 has a been rejected completely ignored by HMCTS including an Internal Review, which is why this request is directly for your department to answer.

The County Court hearing centre's specified cases

Please provide under the FOIA what a specified hearing centre means and what type of specified civil cases are held in the hearing rooms ?

Please confirm if these specified hearing centre cases are held in public or private and whether this is required to be stated on the court orders ?

Please confirm the level of judge required and if they differ for non specified hearing centre cases or are all county court cases heard in hearing centre rooms or some heard in county courts that are not hearing centre rooms, as I am somewhat confused as to the status of the court ?

Can you lastly say if all county court orders made in the hearing centre rooms are prescribed court orders and on prescribed court forms; not on general court order forms.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Frankham

Data Access & Compliance Unit, Ministry of Justice

Thank you for your e-mail, I am writing to advise you that your enquiry does not fall under the Freedom of Information regime and will be treated by the department as Official Correspondence.
 
It may be helpful if I explain that the Freedom of Information Act (2000) gives individuals and organisations the right of access to all types of recorded information held, at the time the request is received, by public authorities such as the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). Section 84 of the Act states that in order for a request for information to be handled as a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, it must be for recorded information. For example, a Freedom of Information request would be for a copy of a policy, rather than an explanation as to why we have that policy in place. On occasion, the Ministry of Justice receives requests that do not ask for recorded information, but ask more general questions about, for example, a policy, opinion or a decision.
 
This will be dealt with as Official Correspondence and you can expect a response from the appropriate area of the department.
 
If you do have any questions relating specifically to the Freedom of Information or Data Protection Act, please contact the Data Access and Compliance Unit at the following e-mail address: [email address

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HMCTS Customer Service (Correspondence),

Thank you for your email. I apologise for the delay in replying

1. A hearing centre is a court, all money claims are issued in what we call business centres, one is based at Northampton and called the County Court Business Centre, and the other is based at Salford and called the County Court Money Claims Centre. If the case requires a hearing then it is transferred to the Defendants local County Court, also known as the hearing centre.

2. Please confirm if these specified hearing centre cases are held in public or private and whether this is required to be stated on the court orders?

It depends on the type of case, however most civil cases are heard in public. It is not required for this to be stated within the Court order.

3. Please confirm the level of judge required and if they differ for non specified hearing centre cases or are all county court cases heard in hearing centre rooms or some heard in county courts that are not hearing centre rooms, as I am somewhat confused as to the status of the court?

Again it depends on the type of case. For money cases is these are defended the case is transferred to the local County Court (hearing centre) and the Judge will allocate the case to track, this will either be the small claims track, the fast track or multi track. A District Judge would normally deal with a small claims and a Circuit Judge would tend to deal with the more complicated and higher value claims that are allocated to the fast and multi tracks. The cases can be heard in either chambers or a Court room.

4. Can you lastly say if all county court orders made in the hearing centre rooms are prescribed court orders and on prescribed court forms; not on general court order forms.

It depends on the order the Judge makes, however the majority of orders are made on a general court order form.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service | Customer Investigations Team | Customer Directorate
10th Floor (10.34) | 102 Petty France | London | SW1H 9AJ
e-mail: ComplaintsCorres&[email address]

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Dear HMCTS Customer Service (Correspondence),

Thank you for confirming that all money claims are issued in business centre's and that one is based at Northampton. and called the County Court Business Centre, and the other is based at Salford and called the County Court Money claims Centre; neither of which appear to be called The County Court Hearing Centre.

My FOI request was not to be reduced to only money claims but to all species of cases heard in The County Court Hearing Centre's and whether all court orders granted are to marked up with the correct title to include ' hearing centre' and, which specified cases are required to use prescribed forms not general forms.

I also require a list of all matters that must be held in public and cannot be heard in private, especially where a party objects.

As to your point regarding that civil cases heard in private are not required to state that the judge sat in private or marked on the court orders, please refer to the following :

Practice Direction 39A - Miscellaneous Provisions relating to hearings.

1.13 A judgment or order given or made in private, when drawn up, must have clearly marked in the title:

'Before [title and name of judge] sitting in Private

Are you saying that the above provisions only applied to county courts and no longer applies to The County Court Hearing Centre ?

Yours sincerely,

Mr Frankham

Dear HMCTS Customer Service (Correspondence),

Please provide clarification that was requested on 2 February 2017.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Frankham

HMCTS Customer Service (Correspondence),

Dear Mr Frankham

Thank you for your further email.

In respect of civil cases in the county court,
 
All trials - small, fast or multi-track must be heard in open court and
are open to the public to attend.
All committal hearings are open to the public too.
 
CPR Part 39 applies to hearings in the County Court including CCBC and to
all other jurisdictions unless there is another rule expressly disapplying
Part 39; although it is more likely that other parts made provision for
matters to be held in private eg Part 64. 
 
HMCTS previously answered that the majority of hearings are held in public
and there is no requirement to indicate on any order that the hearing was
held in public and that is correct.  The rule you refer to is in respect
of hearings made in private, clearly the order must be marked as being
heard in private if it was.  
 
The contribution is "CPR Part 39 and supplementary practice directions
require that where a hearing is heard in private any order from that
hearing must state it has been made in private, however if a hearing is
held in public there is no requirement to state that on the order.  Other
parts of the CPR may expressly disapply the provisions in CPR Part 39."
 
I can assure you that HMCTS abide by the the rules and mark orders
appropriately.
 
Kind regards
Karen Hamilton
Customer Investigations Officer | HMCTS Customer Directorate

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Dear HMCTS Customer Service (Correspondence),

Thank you for your help in trying to decipher what the difference is since the creation of The County Court (April 2014) that now appears to contains three separate entities (1) Hearing Centre (2) chambers (3) Court room .

All hearing different species of civil cases and sometimes held in private, and if so must be marked up as made in private.

I am still confused as to the purpose of each of the above as I presumed that chambers and court rooms had both amalgamated into the new title of Hearing Centre's under the umbrella of the new name The County Court Hearing Centre, rather than continuing as they were but with the addition of a new Hearing Centre room now called a court under the new title of The County Court.

How is it possible to know under which scenario above a hearing is taking place and which judge is qualified to hear each case, are the hearing centre doors marked up separately in the court buildings and on the court listing and if the majority of court orders are made on general court orders and not prescribed court orders it is virtually impossible to know ?

Do all of the above three scenarios hear and include both public and private family law cases, county court judgments, charging orders, insolvency cases and include all species of civil cases, and which ones require prescribed court forms etc

Part 64 refers to probate an charities, which I presumed are held in public not private .

Are also you saying that civil county courts can now hold committal hearings but that they must be held in public.

Are The County Court enforcing Trusts in private hearings with orders that must be marked as sitting in private in either (1) Hearing Centre (2) chambers (3) Court room .

Yours sincerely,

Mr Frankham

Dear HMCTS Customer Service (Correspondence),

Please provide further clarification that was requested on 18 February 2017.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Frankham

HMCTS Customer Service (Correspondence),

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Frankham

Thank you for your further email below and the attached email. Please note the following response to your request for information on 18 February:

Hearing or trial Centres or Civil Justice Centres are the physical place where cases may be heard; there is scope under the CPR (3.1)for any suitable place to be designated for the transaction of the business of the Court.

The hearing centre (for the purpose of hearing cases) is made up of court rooms or hearing rooms. The word chambers refers to the location of the judge's office. In many cases however District judges hear cases in their chambers as they are suitably equipped to do so. The expression "at" or" in chambers" generally means that the matter is being dealt with informally. Often judges would deal with procedural aspects of a case in their chambers where council was present but no evidence was produced, usually these occurrences dealt with housekeeping issues.

The issue of allocation between judges is dealt with in part 2.4 of the CPR, and see further section I of the Practice Direction 2B.

The current rules (see the Practice Direction to part 39 and in particular Part 39.2(3)) stipulate that cases are to be heard in public or in private; a matter being physically dealt with in a judge's chambers can therefore be in public or in private; see 1.8-1.10 of the part 39 Practice Direction.

The court will have a publicly accessible cause list, which will include any special requirements as to the hearing arrangements, and noting the judge hearing the case. If a court hearing goes into private (the old "at camera") the list will not be amended but the signs will be put up stating that the case is in private. When a case is in private, the order should note this fact on the face of it.

Part 64 does deal with Estates, trusts and Charities , for the issue of whether the case is in private see generally CPR 39.2 and the Practice Direction 64 B.

County Court committal hearings are dealt with under part 81 of the CPR; In March 2015 a practice direction was issued , supplemented by a Practice Guidance issued in June, please see the link https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/...

Yours sincerely,

Anisul Haque
Customer Investigations Team, Customer Directorate

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