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Towards a digital family court
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Those of us who have been campaigning since the last years of the last century for the use of digital resources in the family courts have felt as if we have been crying in the wilderness for someone to hear us but with our voices deafened by the need for other reforms and with other resistance to change. Yet far more IT usage will make considerable savings on costs time and other efficiencies. It might even produce better justice!
Things may be changing. Two developments carry important portents.
In George Osborne's late atumun budget there were dramatic cuts to the budgets of most government departments including the Ministry of Justice. But there was the announcement from the Treasury of £700 million investment admittedly through selling underused courts millions in courts and tribunals over the next five years 'to fully digitalise the courts' with installation of better technology in courtrooms and buildings with consequential changes to procedures. This is excellent news. For too long the family courts have seemed to be stuck in a Jurassic existence. It was in the late 1990s that I heard that te family courts...
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