We issued an application (“the Application”) to Central London County Court (“CLCC”) and this post What Is Wrong With Email? is about a complaint to it over delivery of documents.
It is understood the process involves the Court sealing documents and returning them so they can be served on other parties to the proceedings.
Last year our solicitors sent the Application to CLCC and the sealed documents were not received by them. A month later they contacted the CLCC to enquire about what had happened to the mysterious missing application documents. The CLCC it seems had made an error on the postcode for the solicitors and as a result, it would send them out again. It declined to email the documents to our solicitors.
However, a second lot of documents were not received by our solicitors and this put in jeopardy an initial hearing of the Application.
Our solicitors wrote to CLCC to explain the problem. Having to devote time and cost to something potentially so easily cured by email appears unfortunate.
It appears that at the third (or perhaps fourth attempt), a full set of documents was finally received.
We complained to CLCC about the declination to send the documents to our solicitors via email. This was so we could receive them to serve on the other parties.
With the complaint lodged, we received by email, acknowledgment saying it aimed within 10 working days to provide a response. That timeframe came and went. So we contacted the Cluster Manager who delegated the matter to an Operations Manager who responded as follows:
Unfortunately I’m having difficulty in locating your complaint despite you having supplied the reference number.
The complaint was finally found and a response was provided long after the suggested timeframe for a response which said however that two sets of documents had been sent to our solicitors correctly but:
… I have been unable to pinpoint the reason for non-delivery. I note your position that court staff should have emailed the papers once notified they had not been received by post. The department does not generally serve documents by email and I am satisfied that staff followed the correct steps when sending the documents again by post.
The response is curious and does not appear to accord with our solicitor’s letter to CLCC saying they had been advised that the wrong postcode had been deployed by the Court.
Furthermore, note CLCC does not “generally” serve documents by email. And yet on 13 February 2023, CLCC emailed me a letter with a listing certificate. In any event, the excuse provided appears unimpressive because CLCC was not being asked ‘serve’ documents; it was being asked to deliver documents to my solicitors who would effect service. CLCC appears to have adopted a position that fettered the ability of my solicitors to serve documents. Aside from that it would appear to have been appropriate to avoid inflexibility in the approach given the problems encountered in the delivery of documents by post.
Considering the amount of post that is lost it is a wonder that email is not considered more secure than traditional postal delivery. Whilst there might be concerns about security no system is completely secure. Generally email delivery is instant whereas postal delivery is not. The suggestion that you can inadvertently email the wrong person is not a good reason because you can also put the documents in the wrong envelope as well.
It is now a requirement in a Creditors Voluntary Liquidation for example for an Insolvency Practitioner to notify HMRC by email of the forthcoming Liquidation. It appears this has arisen because of the potential shortcomings of postal delivery of documents. It could result in a relevant HMRC officer not receiving documents posted in time to enable them to vote and influence the process if they so wished. Is it not time for His Majesty’s Court Service to adopt email as the preferred method for the delivery of documents?
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