The process of migrating the vast majority of civil court claims onto online dispute resolution platforms took another step this week with the release for consultation of draft procedure rules. The new 'basic general rules' will be 'far more simple and accessible' than the current Civil Procedure Rules, the master of the rolls, who chairs the Online Procedure Rule Committee (OPRC), said.
The draft, which runs to just nine pages, sets rules for court-based online legal proceedings provided by HM Courts & Tribunals Service in civil, family and tribunal proceedings. It includes a provision that 'the digital service providing the platforms for online proceedings must be designed and maintained so as to be usable by all'. The consultation will close on 15 January 2026.
In a speech to the Housing Law Practitioners’ Association, Sir Geoffrey Vos said last week that HMCTS is 'building an entirely new online platform for possession and property claims, which will exist alongside the Online Civil Money Claims and Damages Online Claims platforms'. The system's first version is due to go live late next spring. The masster of the rolls noted that the abolition of ‘no fault’ eviction under the Renters’ Rights Act, 'will undoubtedly create more contested possession cases than we have had hitherto'. Rules for handling these online will be set out in a practice direction, he said.
Referring to his long-standing vision of the vast majority of civil disputes being resolved before litigation begins, Vos said the committee has already started work on aligning existing dispute resolution, legal information and legal advice platforms. The OPRC will provide guidelines 'or, eventually, rules' that require pre-action services to conform to uniform data standards. 'The idea will be to ensure that the data related to a dispute can be transmitted from platform to platform as needed, and then, if court-based dispute resolution is ultimately required, via an application programming interface into the online court-based dispute resolution platforms.'
On the role of AI in the process, he said that litigants in person are already constructing cases with the help of large language models. 'This is not about whether it is or is not a good thing for claims to be created by AI. AI is a reality now, and individuals are and will be able to use it as their agent to pursue litigation,' he said. And, while he was sure that 'many property disputes could be amenable to machine-made decision-making', whether they should be decided in this way is a matter for wider public discussion. 'This conversation is rather more urgent than many people imagine,' he said.
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