Courts: Digital Technology

The HMCTS Reform Programme, which concluded in March 2025, delivered twelve digital services across the civil, family and tribunal jurisdictions and fully implemented the Common Platform across all 226 criminal courts in England and Wales.

Use of these services has increased substantially, with over 1.1 million criminal cases managed digitally in 2024/25 compared with around 82,000 in 2019/20. Digital services have improved information sharing, reduced reliance on paper processes, and supported more efficient case handling, including through the Single Justice Procedure.

Work is underway to expand court digitisation, building on the systems put in place by Reform. This includes a project working to digitise the remainder of the work in the county court, the implementation of the Renters’ Rights Act to be able to digitally handle Civil Possession claims and Residential Property Tribunal claims, and deploying tactical solutions such as Civil Auto File Share, which supports the transition away from paper-based processes in the County Court enabling digital case files and improving the administrative handling and routing of documents.

In parallel, HMCTS is improving how court listings are managed and accessed through the Courts and Tribunals Hearing Service, which publishes hearing information in a consistent, digital and machine‑readable format across jurisdictions, improving transparency and accessibility for users.

We are continuing to invest in system resilience, monitoring and security in order to ensure that data is processed securely and accurately. Structured incident management processes are applied where issues are identified, including root cause analysis and remediation. Improvements have included enhanced technical monitoring and alerting, strengthened infrastructure resilience, and ongoing updates to application design and code.