Consumer Focus Scotland has published a new report providing a consumer blueprint for thefuture of the civil justice system in Scotland. Making Civil Justice Work for Consumers sets out the consumer champion’s policy position on civil justice and highlights the key areas of the system that are priorities for reform.
The principles underpinning Consumer Focus Scotland’s approach to civil justice are that the system needs to be user-friendly, affordable and accessible to ensure that when required users are able to enforce their rights and settle their disputes.
In order to realise this vision of a civil justice system fit for the twenty-first century, the report proposes a four-step approach to removing barriers to access to justice:
- A public legal education strategy
- Joined up and appropriate advice services
- An emphasis on informal means of resolving disputes
- More user-friendly formal dispute resolution processes
Head of Policy and Solicitor at Consumer Focus Scotland, Sarah O’Neill, says that the report’s approach is aimed at establishing a civil justice system that better meets the needs of consumers:
“The Gill Review has already outlined a vision for making Scotland’s civil courts fit for the twenty-first century. This report, informed by years of research and policy development, sets out a four-step approach to reforming the wider civil justice system to ensure that it better meets consumers’ needs and delivers access to justice.”
“Most of us will use the civil justice system at some point in our lives. For many their interaction with it will be difficult and unwelcome because of the stressful issues they are dealing with. Whether facing a divorce or a dispute over access or residence of children, debt recovery, a consumer dispute or a housing problem, the public’s experience of the civil justice system has too often been that it doesn’t properly support them to resolve their dispute in the most appropriate way, at the appropriate time.”
“The present system focuses too much on the needs of the professional users of the system, such as solicitors, advocates and judges, rather than those of the ultimate users, those who become involved in civil disputes. We believe that implementing the steps set out in this report would give Scotland the user-friendly, affordable and accessible civil justice system that consumers desperately need in the twenty-first century.”
Consumer Focus Scotland will use this report to further its ongoing campaign to ensure that the needs of users are at the forefront of developing a new civil justice system in Scotland.
Ends
Ryan Norton
Communications Manager
Consumer Focus Scotland
Royal Exchange House, 100 Queen Street, Glasgow G1 3DN
Tel: 0141 227 1852
Mob: 07920 870 101