Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to simplify the process for people seeking reasonable adjustments in His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service settings.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) provides reasonable adjustments for court and tribunal users with disabilities, in accordance with its legal duty under the Equality Act 2010, to help them access information and services. HMCTS also has a wider duty to avoid treating people less favourably because of a disability to meet its wider Public Sector Equality Duty. HMCTS encourages court and tribunal users to get in touch before a hearing to discuss any particular adjustments they may need. Information about HMCTS providing reasonable adjustments is available on GOV.UK at www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-courts-and-tribunals-service/about/equality-and-diversity.

HMCTS has mandatory Reasonable Adjustment learning for staff to help them understand what reasonable adjustments are and how the agency should put them in place to support court and tribunal users with disabilities.

As part of the HMCTS Reform Programme, HMCTS is improving how reasonable adjustments are requested and managed within Civil, Family and Tribunals jurisdictions. This will include proactively asking service users for their support needs within their journey, and improvements to case management systems to make it easier for its staff to manage and deliver the adjustments.

HMCTS does record requests for reasonable adjustments. Requests from court and tribunal users across all jurisdictions are manually logged and recorded on OPTIC which is the HMCTS incident and feedback recording system.