Her Majesty's Courts Service

Thursday 14th October 2010 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

In March 2010 a list of key performance indicators was published for Her Majesty’s Courts Service for 2010-11. One of these indicators was “to maintain the “very satisfied” element of the HMCS court user satisfaction survey at or above the 2007-08 baseline of 41%”. The data to measure this indicator are usually captured using an independent survey of court users.

In April 2011 HMCS and the Tribunals Service will come together to form a new integrated agency. Commissioning new surveys for 2010-11 would not represent good value for money as the results would be of limited value and would not be available until after the creation of the new agency. I have, therefore, decided that the survey used to report against this performance indicator should not go ahead.

HMCS remains committed to providing good customer service to all court users across England and Wales. User satisfaction remains strong with 82% of court users satisfied overall, with 40% of those being “very satisfied”. The new integrated courts and tribunals service will continue to deliver improvements in the services provided for courts and tribunal users.