Austerity ain't working

A huge number of courts will soon be closed so that the government can flog them to try to hide the fact that austerity ain't working.

It is obvious that this will cause great harm to the social fabric of the country. Leaving that aside, it also shows a poverty of imagination and aspiration.

Instead of closing the courts and moving to Briggs's online, lawyerless, witnessless, Nuremberg National County Court - here is another plan.

Create far more civil courts, but with all communication to be by email or phone, with no paper to be delivered to courts. This is the case in virtually all states in the US and it works well. There are state-funded booths and staff in shopping malls, etc. to assist those who have no access to computers.

Appropriate local solicitors can be appointed part-time to deal with all interlocutory matters - far better than an unqualified remote legal clerk with little knowledge of the law or the locale.

Hearings should take place locally, but there is no need for a court-only building. Use local council committee rooms or the council's chamber, or the local theatre, or whatever. Hire suited offices as necessary if appropriate.

Recognise there are far
more litigants in person who
are likely to need advice. Get local solicitors to organise a
rota of volunteers. If the reward is having a very local court
then they will be up for it.
Most high street firms used to volunteer at the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB).

The CAB took a wrong turn when it obtained green form contracts and started competing with us. We took a wrong turn with remote factory firms that never see clients.

Why would we volunteer? Because most of us are committed to our local community and it would place us in front of potential clients.

Build courts into new civic centres that would be worthy of their name and establish as and when court facilities such as in the forms of a police station, doctors' surgeries, dentist practices, opticians, and clinics, etc. Public transport to and from centres and car parking availability would transform many communities and in the long term save money, as fewer staff would be needed and many other buildings could be sold off.

Even on an economic basis, court closures make no sense. A quick 'sell the family silver' fix for the government causes everyone else to waste hours travelling to court with a loss in GDP and a likely increase in legal fees.

Furthermore, apparently 65 per cent of single pensioner families do not have cars and 22 per cent of women and 17 per cent of men live in a household without a car.

For many people it will be very difficult to physically get to court.

Locally, St. Albans will have no civil court; I believe that it has had one since the 10th century. In Hemel Hempstead, one of the biggest towns in the country, we have no court of any kind, no 24-hour police station, no maternity unit, no A&E, and no decent sports arena.

Every high-street solicitor could tell us a similar story.

The real agenda is to stop ordinary people enforcing their rights. That must be challenged at all costs, but let us also put forward positive solutions for when this madness ends. SJ

Kerry Underwood is senior partner at Underwoods Solicitors and a course specialist in qualified one-way costs shifting

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