Lies, damned lies and statistics

When any official body releases performance or other statistics it is always interesting to analyse them to see whether they support or undermine the perception of how things are going. The Ministry of Justice has recently released the quarterly court statistics for April to June 2013. They include confirmation that a total of 350,843 claims were issued during the quarter, which continues a downward trend since 2008. 

This confirms my view that perhaps counter intuitively people are less likely to resort to court action when times are hard. You might think that with a squeeze on cash flow and profitability it would be attractive to become involved in extended court action to delay the eventual payment date but actually most businessmen seem to regard litigation as being a game best played when they can better afford to lose. 

Accordingly I am expecting that as we see improvement in the economy the courts will become busier! In the meantime, and notwithstanding this reduction in workload, the average time between a claim being issued and reaching trial during the quarter was 58 weeks which represents a 10% increase since 2008. 

Frankly from personal experience I am amazed that this is not worse. I hate to think the effect that any increase in cases linked to significantly more litigants in person will have. As fees constantly increase there needs to be proper investment in the system or perhaps it is time to privatise!