A body whose membership spends around £49m a year in the civil courts has questioned why the new centralised facility to handle money claims in civil cases was launched earlier this week without its long-awaited payment by account (PbA) electronic system.

The vice chair of the Civil Court Users Association, Amir Ali, said: ‘The new PbA service was to allow repeat business customers to pay court fees electronically without the need to write and issue a cheque, which is an outdated, inefficient and administratively burdensome method. When is the courts service going to deliver?’

HM Courts & Tribunals Service said that PbA had been piloted with a number of firms and had proved successful, but was unable to say when it will be rolled out.

The new County Court Money Claims Service in Salford, Greater Manchester will process around 600,000 money claims in the coming year. Justice minister Jonathan Djanogly said: ‘The new service will deliver costs savings and efficiency improvements by processing administrative work previously carried out in separate county courts in England and Wales. It saved nearly £2m in 2010/11 and is expected to save £4m in 2011/12.’