View from the bench | Help the court to help you

After 16 years as a district judge I am no longer surprised by the fact that, year on year, the workload of judges increases without fail. The same issues continue to plague the courts and their staff across the country.

Numbers of staff have '¨reduced even though workloads in some areas have increased and apocryphally the number '¨of telephone calls raising '¨queries on correspondence have also increased.

CPR Part 5, and specifically the Practice Direction D says: '¨"(1) a party may file a document at court by sending it by facsimile ('fax').

(2) where a party files a document by fax, he must not send a hard copy in addition." '¨This PD is breached by most practitioners.

Prioritise

So how do the county courts deal with correspondence? All post is received and taken for post sorting (in some county courts the post is not delivered by the Post Office till late in the morning and then is not opened until the next day) and sorted to be passed to a section head. The section head then distributes the post into urgent and non-urgent post. The post will be non-urgent unless on the face of the letter a hearing date or other notice is given by practitioners. The urgent post is passed to a member of staff, who reads it, opens the case screen on FamilyMan or CaseMan, logs it on and takes such action as is necessary, and places the letter on the file for action. Non-urgent post is placed in a folder to be logged on and placed on the file as above when the staff have the resources to do so

If an email, or facsimile is received at or about the same time, the court staff will go through the same actions until they see that a similar letter has been received. Practitioners must understand that sending '¨a letter by all three methods '¨only slows down the work of court staff.

Please assist the court staff by complying with rules and practice directions and what is in any event good practice and only send one letter, or one fax, or one email, not two and definitely not three. If you do so the staff will have more time and correspondence will be answered more speedily.

A number of solicitors persist in sending in letters addressed to district judges seeking for instance, an adjournment of a hearing, or removal from a trial window, without the consent of the other party and without explanation. Firstly the county court staff may consider the informal application to be non urgent because it is informal, secondly are likely to send that informal application back to the solicitors so it can be supported by a formal application by Form N244 and the appropriate fee of £80, or thirdly if it is placed before a district judge they '¨are unlikely to grant the application if there is no consent and no explanation.

Please help your client and '¨the court by using the correct form, paying the correct fee and giving a proper explanation for the application.

Patience is a virtue

Finally, there appears to me to be a growing trend of practitioners in issuing an application using Form N244, and giving proper reasons for an order, but failing to give a considered time estimate for hearing of the application. Some practitioners do this to obtain an earlier hearing, which is frowned upon by all district judges. Others forget that a district judge needs time to read an application and having heard the application time to consider the judgment they are to give.

Give what is a considered time estimate and help both your client and the judge. If not there is risk an application will be part heard and that there will be costs consequences as a result. SJ