HM Courts and Tribunals Service engagement groups
Source: gov.uk (2025-11-18)

Professional and public user groups working with us to continuously improve and update our services.

We’re continuing to modernise our courts and tribunals services to make them more straightforward, accessible and efficient for all.

We host a number of engagement forums to make sure we’re consulting with professional and public user groups on proposals, developments and services within HMCTS, to better understand their needs.

Criminal Justice Engagement Groups

Criminal Justice Engagement Groups bring together the police, prison and probation agencies so we can coordinate our plans for improvement.

HMCTS and representatives of the legal profession also contribute to the judicial-led Crown Court Improvement Group (https://www.judiciary.uk/guidance-and-resources/crown-court-improvement-group/), chaired by the Senior Presiding Judge, to improve the performance of the Crown Court in England and Wales. Representatives from across the criminal justice system, including the Crown Prosecution Service, HM Prison and Probation Service, the Legal Aid Agency meet monthly and report directly to the Lord Chief Justice.

Local Criminal Justice Boards bring together criminal justice organisations across England and Wales and are often chaired by local police and crime commissioners or chief constables. HMCTS is represented at these meetings through Regional Heads of Operations (Crime) who contribute to discussions and policing decisions involving criminal courts within each police force area.

Legal Professional Engagement Groups

We undertake regular engagement with legal professional bodies such as the Bar Council, the Law Society and the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives at both Chief Executive and policy levels. We also work with these bodies to make sure practitioners’ views are considered in our ongoing work.

Each jurisdiction also hosts ad-hoc forums involving legal professionals to present engagement activity on specific issues and projects, based on jurisdictional project timetables and key areas of interest for the profession.

Public User Engagement Groups

A Strategic Public Engagement Group oversees four jurisdictional public engagement groups for civil, family, tribunals and crime. All groups meet tri-annually.

The purpose of these groups is to get insight into users’ experience and feedback on services. Members of the strategic group are senior cross-jurisdictional, third sector representatives and the group is chaired by Head of User Inclusion and Mr Robin Justice Knowles.

Jurisdictional groups are chaired by HMCTS service owners and Head of User Inclusion. They include practitioners that regularly support users and who are experts within the jurisdictions.

If you’re interested in joining any groups, want further information or access to the full list of stakeholders, please contact us at xxx@xxx.xx (mailto:xxx@xxx.xx).

HMCTS Media Working Group

The group brings together representatives of the media and HMCTS policy and operational representatives to discuss issues around media access to our sites and hearings.

For further information on any of these groups, contact: xxx@xxx.xx (mailto:xxx@xxx.xx).