Error in arranging a hearing did not lead to the complainant losing his court case

What happened

Mr W applied to a court to be given control over his wife's financial and property affairs. His application was due to be heard at a court hearing. However, because of an administrative error, the hearing did not go ahead.

The court then received an alternative application from another Family member requesting control over Mr W's wife's affairs. After many months, during which the matter was transferred to another court, another court hearing was held. The court decided in favour of the Family member rather than Mr W.

Mr W complained that, if the original hearing had gone ahead as planned, his application would have been the only one in existence and would therefore have been successful. He also complained, on many occasions, about the length of time it took to process the application.

HMCTS accepted it had made an error in relation to the original hearing. However, it did not accept that this had led to Mr W's application being unsuccessful. It said a judge had made the decision on the application and it had no power to overrule that decision.

HMCTS acknowledged that it had not handled Mr W's complaint as well as it should have. In particular, it should have responded to his concerns earlier than it did. It offered to pay Mr W £100 in recognition of its error.

What we found

We did not uphold this complaint. Although HMCTS had made errors in its handling of this case, it had made reasonable attempts to put matters right for Mr W.

We agreed with HMCTS that its original error had not led to Mr W's application being unsuccessful. We noted that although the Family member had not yet made their own application by the time of the original hearing, they, and others, had raised objections to Mr W's application. In light of these objections, we could not have been certain what the outcome of the original hearing would have been, if it had gone ahead. We also accepted that the final decision on the application had rested with a judge, not HMCTS.

HMCTS should have responded more quickly to the concerns Mr W raised. However, we felt the amount it offered him was an appropriate remedy to the inconvenience he suffered as a result of this.

Putting it right

Because we were satisfied that HMCTS had already made reasonable attempts to put matters right, we made no further recommendations.