How long will it take to get my case to court?
By Alison Hine, 26 January 2012 –
Suzie Fisher writes:
One question often asked by clients, is how long their case is going to take to get to Court. But the fact is that in most cases they never get to Court because the vast majority of claim settle.
To help answer this question, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has published a new online tool on the Open Justice website that allows the public to view the length of time to trial for cases in the county courts (seeOpen Justice: The truth about civil cases ).
The tool, which is part of the MoJ's drive to improve the transparency of the justice system by increasing accessibility to information, provides statistics for individual county courts, as well as the national average for England and Wales, allowing the public to make comparisons between different areas. It also confirms that typically only about 3-4% of civil claims brought to the county courts require a hearing.
Locally, Kendal is quickest at getting Small Claims Hearings dealt with at 26 weeks, compared to Carlisle (34) and Lancaster (31). However Kendal is the slowest for Fast Track and Multi Track cases at 93 weeks, compared to Carlisle (73) and Lancaster (60).