Solicitors must band together and lobby to prevent further decline in the facilities this country offers for civil litigation, says Tony Guise

It is clear that investment in the civil justice infrastructure is dropping away as the government intensifies its focus on the criminal system.

The Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) once held up the courts and tribunal modernisation programme as its flagship policy to transform the operating systems of the courts throughout England and Wales.

Now, with the programme's budget for the next three years slashed from hundreds of millions of pounds to a mere 75 million, the talk is all about the art of the (very limited) possible.

The needs of a system badly lacking in technology are overlooked by a government ignoring a system perilously close to collapse, as the Master of the Rolls has pointed out.

As with the flagship policy, so with the flagship courts.

The country's premier courts, the Royal Courts of Justice (RCJ), are damned by the Treasury for making a loss in an exercise of absurd logic of which CS Lewis would have been proud.

Yet these are the courts that developed the greatest system of jurisprudence the world has ever seen.

The fact that some of the largest disputes in the world remain litigated in this country is testament not to our facilities but to the influence of the common law, our lawyers and our judiciary.

For how much longer shall we be able to compete with jurisdictions such as Singapore, Paris and New York? Jurisdictions hungry for a larger slice of the litigation fee cake are providing the facilities to make sure they attract the serious players.

Sadly, this problem is not confined to London, as court facilities throughout the country struggle to cope with inadequate IT and dilapidated buildings - unless, of course, they share facilities with a criminal court.

Delegates at last week's conference organised by the London Solicitors Litigation Association agreed that the problem of the RCJ is one of under-utilisation while the problem besetting the Central London County Court is one of over-utilisation on an awkward split site costing I million a year in rent.

The Supreme Court Group's plan, under its new director, Mark Camley, envisages rationalisation of the Court Estate, a single building for the Central London County Court and an intensive use of the RCJ with the courtrooms vacated by the Commercial, Technology and Admiralty Courts allocated to the Family Division.

The next milestone is approval by the Lord Chancellor by the end of November.

There is no doubt that the time has been reached when the needs of litigators as a group should be expressed in an organisation of their own.

Such a grouping would be capable of directing campaigns to ensure that the issues receive effective and focused lobbying to secure, for example, good facilities, throughout the country, in which to try civil disputes.

The objectives of such an organisation should be:

- Actively to promote positive change in the civil justice system in England and Wales for the benefit of both clients and practitioners;

- To further and protect members' interests;

- To inform, educate and assist members;

- To liaise with and lend assistance to the DCA, the Civil Justice Council, professional bodies and others on any issue relevant to these objectives;

- To fund and support campaigns to reform the administration of civil justice in England and Wales.

I seek expressions of interest in establishing this group.

It is not yet too late to reverse effects of the years of neglect.

Tony Guise is the principal of GUISE Solicitors and President of the London Solicitors Litigation Association