Civil Courts

Civil Courts deal with non-criminal matters, for example, contract, tort or human rights issues. They are designed to deal with disputes between individual citizens and/or buisnesses. There is some crossover with criminal courts, but generally they have seperate courts.

The Civil Justice System was largely reformed in the 1990s. There are two key civil courts: the County Court and the High Court.

Lord Woolf, in 1995, following the historic public criticism of the civil justice system, reported that 'the key problems facing civil justice today are cost, delay and complexity'. The reforms that he suggested in his report, Access to Justice (1996) were largely incorporated into the Civil Procedure Rules of 1999. The main objective of these rules were to deal with cases in a more just way.

• Case management handed to individual judges.
• A 'track' system was introduced in the County Court, to put a claim in a hierarchical order depending upon the value of the claim.
• Pre-action protocols were introduced.
• Other forms of dispute resolution, including alternative dispute resolutions…