Section 32: Material support for the reforms
Any reforms to be undertaken must be adequately resourced. In particular, provision must
be made to ensure that adequate judicial and court resources are in place to implement
comprehensive case management and other functions mandated by the reforms and to
accommodate trials in accordance with prescribed timetables.
An analysis of the system's demands in the light of proposed reforms should be conducted
before and after such reforms take effect in order to determine how judges, masters and
administrative staff (including staff in any newly defined posts) should best be deployed so as
to respond effectively to those demands.
Training programmes to familiarise judges and other court staff with any reforms adopted,
tailored to the knowledge and skills required to implement such reforms, should be
established and made compulsory for civil judges, masters and all other relevant court staff.
Steps should be taken to develop the Court's existing computerised system to enable it to
facilitate any reforms by being able to accommodate not merely administrative support, but
also to perform case-flow management, resource allocation and management statistics
functions.
Research should be commissioned so as to monitor continuously the system's functioning,
establishing baselines of performance, guiding the deployment of resources, helping tailor
judicial and court staff training and assessing the benefits or disadvantages of particular
reforms in practice.
Proposals
76 to 80, for making it essential that the proposed reforms be supported by the
allocation of adequate resources; by proper training for judges and court staff (and members
of the legal profession and others concerned); by continuous monitoring and the
implementation of adjustments and changes as necessary; and by seeking efficiencies
through the use of information technology; should be adopted.