Clive Wismayer, of Wismayers Solicitors, Great Bookham filed a High Court order to force a county court to list a hearing on a landlord-tenant case in protest at what he claims is the ‘appalling’ level of administrative failures at courts.

HM Courts Service (HMCS) has declined to comment on individual cases although it did confirm that there has been a decline in complaints in recent years. In 2007-08, 8,556 complaints were made about county courts, 18% down on the previous year.

Wismayer said that, while not all courts’ administration is poor, the level of administrative failures amounts to a ‘national scandal’.

In other complaints about the service received in courts recently, Judge Harvey Crush of Quadrant Chambers complained to the Gazette of clerical staff being ‘either innumerate or illiterate, or both’. David Gowlet, of Daybells solicitors in Stratford, London, complained of a court failing to answer telephone calls, failing to respond to letters and faxes and failing to make medical reports available to a district judge, he stated ‘A letter to the court manager complaining about this has still not elicited a response’.

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