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Old IT hurting courts, says report

The 20-year-old case management system is slowing down the courts, the National Audit Office has said.

By Miya Knights, 6 Mar 2009 at 10:23

A report published today has identified “weaknesses” in the two main IT systems of Her Majesty’s Courts Service.

The National Audit Office (NAO) report found the IT systems were part of the Crown Court’s existing resources that needed overhauling in order to remove a number of risks to achieving value for money that remain.

The report advised that improvements were needed to the two main Crown Court IT systems. It said the existing case management system, known as CREST, is 20 years old, is no longer supported by the manufacturer and so, brings operational risks.

It added that the Crown Court’s XHIBIT system, which provides real-time information on the progress of trials and records results, also needed needs greater flexibility to respond to changes in legislation. XHIBIT is not currently able to accommodate new or revised forms when they are introduced.

Tim Burr, NAO head, said that HM Courts Service faces a tight budgetary position and, as such, needed to get the most from its estate, staff and IT resources if Crown Court cases were to start promptly.

He said: “The service needs to improve its allocation and development of staff, so that it has enough well-trained people in each of its court locations, and tackle weaknesses in IT systems which currently bring operational risks and impair efficiency.”

Edward Leigh, MP and chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), added that the existing functionality of the CREST case management system was limited, as well as ageing.

“In this day and age, it is extraordinary that if a case is moved from one court to another, then all of the information has to be typed in again from scratch,” he added.

The Crown Court operates from around 500 courtrooms at almost 100 locations around England and Wales.

The report added that some Crown Court locations in London and parts of the South East were running at, or close to, full capacity, which was increasing waiting times that affect victims, witnesses and other parties in a court case.

It pointed out that HM Courts Service is planning to spend £120 million to increase the number of Crown Court rooms by 30 (6 per cent) over the next three years.

But while the report welcomed the spending plans, it also called for improvement to the assessment of future Crown Court workloads and a standardised way of assessing the courtrooms needed to meet that workload.