More than 1,200 posts were cut by HM Courts and Tribunals Service last year, just as it faced an upsurge in workload caused by rising numbers of litigants in person.

A response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request by the Gazette discloses that full-time equivalent staff numbers at HMCTS were 19,535 in November 2011, a drop of 6% on the same date in 2010 when the then separated courts and tribunals sectors employed 20,772 people.

HMCTS was created in April 2011, bringing together Her Majesty’s Courts Service and the Tribunals Service into one agency. The Public and Commercial Services union has said that staff numbers are being cut too quickly to maintain a decent service, but the government insists frontline numbers have not been affected.

A spokesman for PCS told the Gazette: ‘In the courts service, as in the rest of the Ministry of Justice and the wider civil service, we believe more staff are needed, not fewer.’

HMCTS has succeeded in its aim of cutting staff costs, reducing monthly salary expenditure from £39.9m in October 2010 to £36.9m in October 2011. Three staff members were receiving annual salaries exceeding £100,000 at the end of November.

The service has consistently denied that cuts have meant there are not enough staff members in courts, with the restructuring programme focused on management grades and not on frontline staff.

The FoI request found that during the 12 months covered by the response there were just four voluntary redundancies (three at deputy director level) and no compulsory lay-offs. Natural wastage has accounted for the vast bulk of the cuts, it appears.

A HMCTS spokesman said that the agency is being restructured to create a ‘more efficient, effective and affordable’ service to the public.

  • Users of all civil and family courts in the London region were informed this week that service counters will open for just two hours daily.A letter sent by HMCTS to solicitors explains that visits to the court office will be limited to those which are ‘absolutely essential’. Naomi Angell, co-chair of the family law committee of the Law Society, said: ‘These types of cuts come at exactly the wrong time, when the removal of legal aid means litigants in person will need more, rather than less, help in court.’