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A shortage of funds is not the only problem: HMCTS is cutting itself off from the public which it exists to serve and centralising its administration, with damaging consequences. The counters, where litigants used to obtain help, have been closed. Employees with decades of service are being moved to distant administrative centres in the knowledge that many will resign. Their places are taken, if at all, by temporary workers whom the remaining staff waste time trying to train. The results are not surprising: frustrated litigants, chronic delay and frequent mistakes. If an efficient system of local justice is to survive, the policy of centralisation needs to change soon.