Jo Edwards gives evidence to parliamentary committee about the state of the family courts
Jo was invited, as Chair of national family law organisation Resolution’s Family Law Reform committee, to give oral evidence to the Public Accounts Committee about the ongoing courts modernisation programme.
The Ministry of Justice is planning to invest £1.2 billion in modernising the courts of England and Wales, by making more applications digitised and in time moving certain hearings online. However, they are pressing ahead with a rapid court closures programme to pay for it. Jo spoke of the impact that this is having on access to justice and of the serious delays which there are in some parts of the family justice system, calling for a slowing down of the court closures programme so that these issues can be addressed and technology developed and robustly tested before it is rolled out.