CIVIL JUSTICE STATISTICS: APRIL TO JUNE 2015

September 8, 2015 · by · in Civil Procedure, Statistics, Uncategorized

The Ministry of Justice have published Civil Justice statistics for April to June 2015. Here are some key points

NUMBERS OF CLAIMS

  • In April to June 2015, courts dealt with around 366,000 claims, 34,000 allocations, 66,000 defences and around 194,000 judgments. The number of claims courts dealt with decreased 1% on the same quarter last year, defences were up 4%, with allocations down 1% and judgments decreasing by 5%.
  •  Although the quarterly judgment figures are volatile; the long term trend is in line with the number of claims. Annually, both claims and judgments fell between 2009 and 2012 and have since shown increases in the last two years (figure 1.1).
  •  In 2014, both the claimant and defendant had legal representation in 52% of all defences (compared to 56% in 2013) whilst neither the respondent nor the claimant had representation in 27% of defences (compared to 21% in 2013). This is driven by defences of unspecified money claims, which account for 51% of all defences and in almost all such defences (97%) both sides were legally represented.
  •  There was an average of 53.4 weeks between a fast or multi-track claim being issued and the claim going to trial in the second quarter this year, compared with 54.2 weeks in the same period last year.

BANKRUPTCY PETITIONS

  • There were 5,080 insolvency petitions (excluding in the Royal Courts of Justice) in April to June 2015. This shows a 22% decrease on the same quarter last year and remains within the general downward trend seen since 2009 (Table 1.2). The large decrease since 2009 has been steepest amongst bankruptcy petitions made by debtors, then among bankruptcy petitions made by creditors, and least severe among petitions for company windings up

ALLOCATION TO TRACKS

  •  In the most recent quarter almost half of all allocations (16,388) were to the small claims track, level with the same quarter of 2014.
  •  40% (13,390) were allocated to the fast track, no change from the same quarter in 2014.
  • 11% (3,830) were allocated to the multi track, 10% less than the second quarter of 2014.

The Solicitors Journal has an article on this with some interesting diagrams.

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