Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of the Common Platform for enabling barristers to transfer cases without a transfer being undertaken by a defence solicitor.

Phase 1 of Common Platform was not designed for the use of Crown Court judges or barristers. It replaces the systems used by HMCTS staff in the Crown and magistrates’ courts and is used by magistrates’ court users to view case materials.

Phase 2 of Common Platform will introduce new functionality that will enable Crown Court cases to be handled on Common Platform. Until then the Crown Court Digital Case System (DCS) continues to be the single document repository for Crown Court Cases. Barristers are expected to continue accessing the information they need from DCS and do not need to access Common Platform other than to check into a case when arriving at the hearing.

Having worked with defence practitioners throughout the design stage of the programme, we were aware that once Crown Court cases are fully managed on Common Platform, there is a requirement for barristers to be able to give access to cases to other barristers, at short notice and at unsociable hours. This requirement was intended to be met when other Phase 2 functionality is introduced.

The absence of this flexibility in Phase 1 does mean that if a case changes hands at short notice, counsel attending the hearing may not be able to check into the case, and a process has been put in place for court staff to complete the check-in on their behalf in this scenario.

In early April 2023 we learned that, despite all the above, the inability to reassign cases was causing issues for barristers.

Now that we are aware of the issue, the functionality to enable greater flexibility has been reprioritised and will be delivered sooner than planned. The development teams are analysing this change now and we should soon be able to provide a time estimate for its release.

We are grateful that this issue was raised with us, and welcome further feedback to improve the Common Platform for all our users.