Transforming the English Legal System: Administrative Justice
The Consultation Paper, Transforming our Justice System also has important proposals to make about the tribunals system, though – because the creation of the Tribunals Service in 2007 has already led to considerable structural change – changes to tribunals will be less marked than to the the criminal and civil justice systems.
The Paper states that in line with their principles of a just, proportionate and accessible system, the Government is planning on the following:
i. Streamlining procedures and encouraging a balanced approach: We areworking to simplify our procedures and put entire services online wherepossible, carefully designed to be intuitive and easy to follow. Many relativelystraightforward tribunal decisions do not require full physical hearings, so whereappropriate, judges will be making decisions based on written representations,hearings will be held over telephone or video conference and specially trainedcase officers will help cases progress through the system. All of these changeswill make the process quicker and easier to deal with for all parties involved in acase.ii. Digitising the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal: This will be one of thefirst services to be moved entirely online, with an end-to-end digital process thatwill be faster and easier to use for people that use it.iii. Simplifying panel composition: Another factor in taking a balanced, tailoredapproach to tribunal cases is making sure the panels that make decisions intribunals are designed to best suit the circumstances of the case. Most tribunalscurrently reflect historic arrangements that may be out of date and do not tailorthe expertise of the panel according to the case. We propose to revise thecurrent arrangements for setting panel composition to make sure that thatappropriate expertise is focussed on those cases that need it. We wouldwelcome views on how best to achieve this.iv. Reforming employment tribunals: The Employment Tribunals deal with a hugevolume of claims every year – c. 83,000 in 2015/16. They work on similarprinciples to many other tribunals and the civil courts, but currently have anentirely separate structure, including a specific appeals tribunal. We areconsidering whether the new approaches being adopted elsewhere in thejustice system could be applied to the employment jurisdiction.
Leave a Reply