A superb example of how the civil courts in the UK operate.
A hearing was set for last week and the appropriate Notice of Hearing was sent out for that case.
However what the merry pranksters at civil section failed to point out was that there were two other pending civil cases to be heard by the same High Court Judge at the same hearing on the same day.
No Notice of Hearing document was sent out in relation to these other two cases. Equally no Order in relation to them was made ahead of the hearing. In short no notification of these two other claims being in play that day at all.
Therefore there could be no case preparation for these other two claims as I was blithely unaware that these were due to go ahead in the same hearing as a claim that I was notified about.
This is pretty much par for the course with HMCTS these days: an organisation in which the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.
The consequence of this overall for court users is delay, confusion and ultimately injustice.
The consequence for your poor bloody correspondent is of course more time, effort and expense spent correcting the errors made by court staff.
Twist ending to the tale: an application in respect of this matter was sent to the court just a few moments ago with an inquiry as to what the fee would be to file this. The answer was returned almost immediately.
However a complaint about the poor standard of service in the failure to notify me of two cases to be heard hasn’t been answered at all.
Conclusion: HMCTS is more interested in taking your money to correct service level errors they’ve made than they are in responding to legitimate and justified complaints.
Legal Babble 