The Civil Justice Council’s 11th National Forum on Access to Justice took place on 18 November 2022, with a focus on digital justice, including the digital funnel through which all cases will commence. Lord Bellamy KC, parliamentary under secretary of state, gave the keynote speech, in which he outlined the five main points on his Ministry of Justice (MoJ) radar.

‘We must have a legal aid system that benefits those who need it most,’ Lord Bellamy said. To this end, he explained, the MoJ was: making changes to help stabilise the existing legal aid market, particularly putting an extra £10m a year into housing legal aid to enable free early advice on housing, debt and welfare benefits before appearing in court; uprating the civil legal aid means test to allow 2m more adults to qualify; launching a full-scale civil legal aid review, with a formal announcement hopefully before the end of the year; undertaking two early legal advice pilots in Manchester and Middlesbrough, testing how early social welfare advice can resolve problems more quickly; providing legal support grants for funding advice organisations; and running an online sign-posting pilot for private renters to resolve disrepair issues.

To promote dispute resolution across the system, all claims valued under £10,000 will automatically be referred to a free one-hour telephone mediation session. Lord Bellamy commented that ‘there are not many cases that are really worth litigating under £10,000’, but nonetheless added that ‘in terms of access to justice, the court has to be available for cases that for one reason or another can’t be mediated or settled. We cannot deprive the citizens of the right to go to court.’

Lord Bellamy explained that there was a lot happening in the traditional court system: waiting times were improving ‘across the board’, resulting in, for example, 80 per cent of courts offering a possession hearing within eight weeks; funding was being invested to improve waiting times by increasing sitting days for fee-paid judges from 30 to 80; and online civil money claims cases were now three times quicker than before, which he felt was making a real difference to the whole process.

Lord Bellamy confirmed that fixed recoverable costs are to be extended to a wider range of civil cases, to allow people to litigate who might otherwise not be able to. He also acknowledged, though, that this is a complex area and has particular implications in housing cases. The changes were initially planned for April 2023 but have now been postponed until October 2023 ‘to make sure we absolutely get it right’.