Tribunal waiting times: digital v paper

As a result of a query,  I have just had this from HMCTS: “In February 2023 the total waiting time for cases submitted by paper was 54 weeks, compared with 20 weeks for cases submitted digitally.”

This is an absolutely astonishing difference in my view, and extremely unfair on those appellants who are not digitally literate.

I am just looking through my notes for the two recent North West TUGs I attended and I note an observation that ninety percent of appeals are now handled digitally.

I also noted a major failure on my part to ask just how many clerks they have left having moved to digital and moved those who wished over to the contact centres. I know the answer but failed to ask the question so as to put the answer in the public domain. My bad.

The fundamental issue is that HMCTS remain a basket case organisation in respect of their ability to handle basic IT projects and forecast future case loads and staffing requirements. Thus they have moved to digital whilst they have both a significant backlog of paper and a simultaneous loss of clerks which anyone bar HMCTS could have predicted given the pandemic; cost of living crisis; move to digital and move to contact centres that most of them didn’t want to move to. They still think they are genuinely brilliant at their work and have no need to engage with us plebs in any meaningful way at any level. They talk at us rather than with us. They are set to transmit but not receive. They especially have zero insight into the impact any of their digital moves have on appellants; representatives; disabled people etc. The idea of employing an organisation to aid digital awareness and skills amongst appellants is probably the largest red flag you could have that an organisation can’t see the wood for the trees and possibly doesn’t know what a tree is any more.

Anyone dealing with the Pension Service over the past decade will recognise the same culture. “We’re right. You’re simply not listening hard enough. You need to be even quieter so our masters believe that our messages are getting through and are the right ones.” Hard to believe that 23 years into the 21st century they think they are leading as opposed to about three decades behind (being generous). 

The digital process/experience remains clunky at best but in the background there is a silent crisis. A backlog of non-digital cases would be bad to begin with. Having run out of staff to address that is just good old fashioned embarrassing and reflects badly on the people at the very top of the organisation as it should.  Sadly nothing scandalous, divisive and unequal equates to a scandal any more. It’s just another depressing part of the scenery.