NEW SCHEME: Courts Service admits it has no system to count or assess collection rate


HM Courts Service (HMCS) did not have computer systems capable of accounting for or keeping track of victim surcharges when the scheme started on 1 April and still cannot calculate the rate of recovery or even how many people have been surcharged, according to information gained by the Gazette under the Freedom of Information Act (FoI).



Despite collecting an estimated £305,000 since it began, HMCS does not know how many £15 surcharges are levied or what percentage of those have been paid, and has had to resort to manually processing the surcharges. Its 'legacy IT systems' - those computer systems yet to be upgraded - do not even allow a national overview of how many people are fined in criminal convictions, the FoI response said, let alone how many surcharges on those fines are made.



According to the answer given to the Gazette, 'HMCS has not put any systems in place to assess the collection rate of victim surcharge' and it cannot count the number of surcharges because 'the existing IT legacy systems do not allow any kind of national overview around numbers of individuals with fines, victim surcharge or other impositions'.



Whitehall is on record as expecting the surcharge to make £16 million a year more than it costs to collect, but without being sure how much it is actually collecting, or from whom or how many surcharges remain unpaid, disbursement of funds to their intended recipients can hardly be an accurate system. This £16 million is supposed to prop up the Victims Fund, which government has pledged for the use of groups such as Victim Support.



In the FoI response, HMCS called the manual counting of receipts 'newly developed amendments to existing IT programmes', which allow it to separately identify the surcharge from other court revenues. This manual work 'precedes a more comprehensive IT network across the courts', it added. When this network will be in place is unknown.



Only once the manual methods 'prove satisfactory' will it be possible for the surcharge receipts on fines to be 'accounted for separately and to form part of the Ministry of Justice audited accounts', it added.



An HMCS spokesman told the Gazette that the IT systems do 'work', in that that the manual arrangements allow the surcharge to be separately identified, and an audit is currently being conducted.



Rupert White