Civil Justice Council calls for single digital court for enforcement of judgments

A single unified digital court should be created for enforcement of judgments - whether given in the High Court or a county court - with all debts recorded, including those falling outside the courts.

That is among 39 recommendations to reform the enforcement process for debts made by the Civil Justice Council (CJC) in its report Enforcement.

Welcoming the report, Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls, and chair of the CJC, said: “For too long, civil enforcement processes in England and Wales have been overly complex and unwieldy.

“There is an obvious need for rationalisation and modernisation, but it is a subject that has perhaps always been placed in the ‘too difficult box’.”

He said the report working group led by HHJ Karen Walden-Smith had recommended reforms “which I am confident, if adopted, will lead to significant improvements in the enforcement landscape for all”.

The report said the county court system needed better funding to deal with an accumulation of cases and enforcement actions.

“There is considerable concern, expressed by those who provided evidence, about the complexities of enforcement and how the underfunding and under-resourcing of the county court, in particular, leads to very significant delays in hearings, delays in orders being produced, delays in enforcement through the bailiffs and delays in resolution,” the CJC said.

It concluded that the consequent failure of the court to provide resolution “creates an economic drag” and that county courts had to be adequately funded “to effectively enable judgments to be obtained and then enforced within a reasonable period of time".

Removing enforcement entirely from the county courts to the High Court was possible but would need further regulation of enforcement.

The Ministry of Justice “should take notice of the degree of widespread and significant concerns expressed by court users about the current failings in the county court, created by resource restrictions”, the CJC said.

But if the county courts retained responsibility for enforcement while still not being better funded, the CJC called for a move away from the two-tier system through the creation of a single unified digital court for enforcement of judgments from any court “with the benefit of a portal retaining information about the defendant’s financial position and dealing with all the debts relating to one individual or party – including those outside the court process”.

It noted a general view that the status quo could not continue, but “there was no particular appetite for the replacement of the court-centred approach to enforcement for an administrative or judicial officer model”.

The CJC said significant further work was needed, including ascertaining how the digital enforcement court would operate, considering enforcement in property and extra-jurisdictional cases and investigating further whether there should be a change from the current court-based model to an administrative or judicial officer model.

Imprisonment for contempt for non-compliance with the requirement to answer questions “should be reserved for those cases where the sums involved are significant and where it can be established that there is serious contumelious failure to engage, rather than it being a standard sanction”, the CJC said.

Other recommendations included using clear and less intimidating language in court communications, increased funding for debt advice organisations and increased resolution of cases at an earlier stage before reaching court.

Mark Smulian