Posted: Thursday, 17 December 2020 @ 10:17
From my experience this year 2020 it represents by far the most erratic experience which my firm and my clients have faced in navigating the Court system.
On the one hand for cases such as probate applications and County Court, dealings have never been so poor. This manifests in a long waiting period for correspondence and Court dates to appear and the complete inability to call or email staff to ask what is going on. Like many lawyers I am sitting on cases which cannot proceed and there is no effective recourse.
Yes, this can be pinned on Covid 19, but as Conservative Solicitor MP, John Stevenson has pointed out the service deteriorated directly due to replacing district registries by a centralised system and paper applications being replaced by a digital way of working.
In other words Covid 19 has just compounded a problem despite the fact the new system at Court employs more people and is more expensive.
This is all rather depressing and annoying but hats off the to the High Court which is fertile ground for a number of Court applications such as removal of executor applications and Trust disputes. The High Court has an online system with excellent administration and has been working brilliantly even in the early stages of the pandemic.
Thus where possible I encourage to if we can use the High Court and minimise use of the probate registries which remain inefficient at this time.