Access to justice in the civil courts is worse than it was a decade ago and is set to decline further, according to the new president of the Association of District Judges.

David Oldham, who took over last week from Edwina Millward, said that repeated rises in court fees are making civil law unaffordable – and the public are getting a worse service from the courts than when Lord Woolf published his landmark 1999 report Access to Justice.

‘Pursuing a debt of up to £5,000, which is a small claim, involves court fees of something like £500,’ Oldham said. ‘People have to think very hard whether to lay out that sort of money when they may not be successful at recovering the money even if they get a judgment in their favour.’

Oldham said cuts in court staff and greater numbers of litigants in person have increased delays, which he predicted would worsen as the recession’s full impact kicks in, with more housing and debt claims.

Civil justice is treated as the ‘Cinderella’ of the court system when it comes to resources – a problem exacerbated by the government’s ambition to make the system self-funding, he said.

‘There has to be a degree of self-funding, but there should also be an appropriate amount of state resource put into the system. It’s a matter of balance.’