The Court Service of England and Wales has won an international award for its Web site following an evaluation of more than 2,400 legal Web sites worldwide.


US-based justice organisation Justice Served awarded the site, www.courtservice.gov.uk, its top ten Web site award for 2004 - one of only two non-US sites to receive the accolade.



The Court Service Web site was praised by judges for its on-line filing facility for civil claims and the exchange of case information over the Internet. A Web page - refreshed every ten minutes - enabling users to track the status of each courtroom, and the availability of court information in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi and Urdu were also key factors in the site's nomination.



The site receives hits from some 370,000 unique users every month, and is administered by a team of seven full-time Web developers. It received the Justice Served award for the first time in 2002.



Web master Paul Crook, who is responsible for the site, said: 'One of our biggest winners has been the Moneyclaim On-line facility, for recovering funds of less than £100,000. It allows people, or companies, to recover money owed without going to court at all - the whole process can be done on-line.



'The court judgments and court forms, which can be completed on-line and e-mailed to the courts, are in high demand. We also ran the Hutton Inquiry Web site, with up-to-date evidence and transcripts, which was hugely popular.'



Mr Crook added that from April next year, the Court Service will join forces with the magistrates' courts to become Her Majesty's Court Service. 'There will be a new Web site which we are working on at the moment,' he said. 'It will be more user-friendly and will have a database of court information to help users find out what kind of work particular courts are dealing with.'



The Federal Court of Australia was the only other non-US organisation to receive the Justice Served award, for its 'e-Court' virtual courtroom where evidence, orders and submissions may be made on-line. Other winners included the California Courts, the US Bankruptcy Court, the Eastern Division of Virginia, and the Pima County Justice Courts in Arizona.