Courts and Tribunals Service Centres: supporting users through centralised systems and teams

Published 4 days ago• 4 minute read

Call handlers and agents are there to support and guide users who may have questions or need information about their court or tribunal case, delivering improved access to justice.

Service Centres are one of the three pillars of our National Services, the other two being the National Business Centres (NBCs) and Enforcement, both of which existed pre-reform.

There are five Service Centres across England and Wales:

Before 2019, it was the responsibility of individual courts and tribunals teams to handle case queries and administrative tasks, using mainly paper-based processes. This meant:

Service Centres have brought significant change to the way we deliver justice and are a truly national resource. By having everyone involved in delivering a service centrally located, and using a single system, an issue can be identified, addressed and resolved far more quickly and efficiently, without the need to send information and instructions across multiple locations.

The benefits of this are:

The move from paper-based to digital processes in many of our services has fundamentally changed how justice is administered.

Benefits of the digital service include:

We are aware that some users need additional support when using digital our services. That is why we:

During 2024, Service Centres and National Business Centres handled over 2.8 million telephone calls. Service Centres received over 519,000 emails and replied to over 25,000 webchat messages (divorce and probate only) from the people who use our courts and tribunals, providing direct support to members of the public, professional users, members of the media, and many others.

These calls were dealt with in an average handling time of just over 14 minutes.

Contact management systems (the way we receive and handle calls, emails and webchat from our users) have changed significantly, with new technology meaning we:

Over 73% of users who completed the post-call survey about their telephony contact in 2024 were satisfied with their call. While feedback on their contact has been positive:

Your staff were professional, polite, compassionate, empathetic and showed good listening abilities. They addressed my concerns and queries efficiently and effectively. Great service in emotionally trying times.

Very helpful, polite and answered my questions and gave all the information needed very clearly and concisely.

Ryan and John work in one of our Service Centres. They describe their experience of supporting a caller through a very difficult situation with professionalism and care. The example also highlights the benefits of new digital services over paper, underlining the benefits of reform.

We take lots of calls from the public who have queries about their applications. However, in this particular case a gentleman called us letting us know his application had gone wrong. He was suffering with lots of personal issues and was clearly feeling suicidal.

I decided we would take responsibility for this and assured him that if there was anything that we could do to help, we will. Luckily here at the Service Centre we have many options to relieve these situations.

We soon found his file wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and the court were not aware of this. My team acted quickly to locate the file, while keeping him on board and calm. We contacted the court, where the judge understood the urgency of the case and granted an order. By taking initiative and having autonomy to make decisions we were able to make this happen quickly.

This gentleman’s case was an old-style paper case. However, if this had been a digital case what took five days to resolve, would have taken under five minutes.

That’s the power of reform, and in these situations the reform project has massively helped people in those situations.

Service Centres, courts and tribunals work hand-in-hand to provide access to justice. They are all part of the same service, wherever in England, Wales or Scotland they are based. Successful working relationships have been built by ensuring there is clarity on the roles and responsibilities of the courts, tribunals and Service Centres and establishing channels of communication, to monitor performance, analyse feedback and plan future improvements.

Now we have embedded our services nationally, we will continue to make incremental improvements. Our plans include: