Delays in issuing Statements of Reasons

We are currently experiencing significant delays in Statements of Reasons being issued.

Any query as to why there is a delay is met with the response, “It’s the covid.”

Firstly,  I can’t see why this should lead to judges taking significantly longer to prepare SoRs.

Even if it is accepted that there is a delay due to covid, then surely the Appellant has a right to be given some indication of when he can expect to receive the SoR, rather than ‘you’ll get it when it’s ready’ policy which seems to prevail at the moment.

Does anyone have any thoughts on when the delay, even under the present circumstances, would become unreasonable, and lead to potential grounds for set aside?

We had a discussion about this a while ago at a pre-Covid Tribunal User Group.  The DTJ there felt a complaint would be appropriate after two months.  He mentioned a case where the statement was requested in time, but was not sent on to the Judge for four months through administrative error.  At that time, the office should have been chasing a Judge for a statement after three weeks.  One of the group advised he always requested a set aside after two months, and if it was not granted, it tended to have the effect of moving things on.

So having sent an e-mail on Monday requesting set aside for a SOR first requested in mid July, I received the following reply from HMCTS this morning:

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Good morning,

Thank you for your email. The Original Tribunal Judge is dealing with the Statement of Reasons as soon as is reasonably practicable and it should be with you by the end of next week.

As I am sure you are aware, Covid-19 is impacting the timescales for all our processes and things are taking longer than usual to action.
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I am currently pondering whether to be awkward, and insist that an application for set aside should have gone before a judge, and not a Clerk to the Tribunal