Was going to write a length diatribe on how badly served we are by Civil Appeals Office at The Royal Courts of Justice but a short explanation, a couple of screenshots and a reproduced email do the job just as well.
This is a blog entry about how a civil appeal matter has received suboptimal service by HMCTS staff, how it’s taken some five months to identify claimed issues with documents supposedly not being sent, but in fact these documents were supplied. How is this related to the shady post of Dismissal List Manager which HMCTS dislike revealing the details of?
To start with here are the screenshots. I’ve been waiting for a response from Civil Appeals Office on this matter since November 2020, their last communication to me prior to this taking some two months to be sent.
Joseph Goswell states his position is in the Case Management Section at Civil Appeals office. He writes:
In actual fact none of the stated errors with the application exist. All the documents required in the matter were supplied in September 2020. See the reproduced email below.
One thing Joseph Goswell doesn’t tend to advertise is his other job at HMCTS – Dismissal List Manager. This is certainly not the post he mentions in the above letter.
It is noted that HMCTS are very shifty and refuse to answer reasonable data access requests for what a Dismissal List Manager actually does. For more on this bizarre refusal to address a perfectly legitimate question see the link below:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/duties_of_dismissal_list_manager
Ludicrously it is claimed no data exists on the role and the responses given to the data access request above are so vague as to be meaningless. In a position paid for out of the public purse why such coyness unless there’s a vested interest in keeping the data secret.
However we can theorise that this role may be someone within HMCTS whose purpose is to frustrate claims at an administrative level for the purpose of enabling them to be dismissed. This seems to tally with the letter content written above in which non-existent issues are identified with a bundle. Of course if HMCTS would like to explain what this role actually is then I’d be happy to include the data here.
My email in response to the letter from Civil Appeals Office states:
I refer to your email below.
I note the delay in response to any issue arising out of this matter and that there has been no communication from your office since November last year. I note that the email prior to that took some two months to receive a response.
The core bundle was filed and served on 2.9.20. Since that point CA have not identified any issue with the bundle which would make it non-compliant.
You state that there is no index. A copy of the index was supplied (index.doc). This shows the reference number for each of the following documents which corresponds to the number starting each document. As was a copy of the sealed order being appealed against (4). The Judicial Review claim form is at (12) and the grounds for JR both follow on from this. In other words all of the grounds you give for the bundle being in error are in fact present and correct and have been with your office since September 2020.
I note further that there has been no communication from CA since September 2020 in relation to the bundle supplied. We are now some five months gone from September 2020. Perhaps you could explain why this is so if there are thought to be errors? For your convenience I have attached a copy of all correspondence so far with CA office.
To go from September 2020 to February 2021 without identifying errors in a bundle and reverting to the Claimant five months later and only at the point at which the Claimant chases the matter up represents an unacceptable service level failure for which I now make a formal complaint to The Court Manager. The errors you state exist with the bundle are not present, as I have shown.
It is further poor service that the attached letter of 11.2.21 states you require these errors correcting by 18.2.21 when you have been sat on these issues for so long. However as stated above each of the documents you claim not to be present is in fact present within the bundle.
A further copy of the bundle is attached to this email.
Please inform me of the progress of this matter, and the progress of the complaint alongside the name of the Court Manager to whom the matter has been referred.
Email of 12.2.21 ends.
So there are the following issues arising here:
- Let’s assume there WERE errors in the bundle supplied to The Court of Appeal… why does it take five months for these to be identified?
- More to the point why wait until an Applicant emails the court five months later before informing of these?
- ..and then give a total of seven days in a pandemic (five if we discount the weekend) for these to be corrected when these matters have been left to lay on file for five months now?
- Admin staff can see that all of the documents they claim were not supplied were in fact attached with the original bundle. So why do they claim they were not?
- Why has there been no communication on this claim for some three months?
- Why is there seemingly no data on the post of Dismissal List Manager which can be made public?
- Why does Joseph Goswell not use his correct title in the letter to me of 11.2.21?
Suspect the answer to the above questions can be found in the shady and little-stated other position of Joseph Goswell as “Dismissal List Manager”!
Is the handling of this matter standard HMCTS incompetence or is the role of Dismissal List Manager a shadier one than we can imagine and one in which civil claims are subject to interdiction and mishandling to frustrate them?
As always anyone or any organisation cited in this blog post has a right to corrections which I will be happy to make on receipt of relevant evidence.
UPDATE TO THE ABOVE: 19.9.21.
I have today been contacted by email by another person who has had a very similar experience with the same people in the same department as I have.
The experience relayed by this person is interesting. Goswell’s position as “Dismissal List Manager” suggests a specific purpose: does HMCTS have a policy of purposefully frustrating and delaying certain types of claim which might prove embarrassing or politically sensitive to the organisation? More data needed but at least three persons to my knowledge have had experiences which suggest so.
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