Miss D's complaint about HM Courts Service
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HM Courts Service’s failure to act on a fax led to Miss D’s arrest; she was handcuffed and detained in a police cell overnight.
Background
On 23 January 2008 a court issued a warrant for the arrest of Miss D for failing to attend the court on that day, in connection with matters involving a local authority. Solicitors acting for the local authority gave an incorrect address for Miss D, which meant that the address on the warrant was wrong. The next day the solicitors faxed a letter to the court saying that Miss D did not live at the address they had given, and asking for the arrest warrant to be immediately withdrawn. They also asked for the summons to be marked as ‘not served’, and for the case to be adjourned until March. The solicitors added that if none of that was possible, HM Courts Service (HMCS) should contact them so that they could arrange for the case to be listed for an application to withdraw the warrant. The court received the faxed letter and annotated it ‘cannot locate file in box for 23.1.08’. The solicitors also wrote to Miss D, enclosing copies of earlier summonses, and said that the case had been adjourned until March. In reply, Miss D said the solicitors’ letter had shocked her as she believed the subject matter of the summonses had been taken care of, while she had not previously received the correspondence they had copied to her. Miss D copied her letter to the court.
Miss D told us that during a later telephone conversation with the local authority she was told about the arrest warrant but by the end of the call she was clear that the proceedings against her, and the warrant, would be withdrawn. A few days later Miss D learnt through a neighbour that the police had been looking for her. She told us that she thought that it was either about the court proceedings or about an assault she had recently witnessed. She telephoned the police to find out what they wanted and they asked to see her in person. She went to the police station that evening and was immediately arrested. Miss D spent the night in custody. The next morning, she was handcuffed to a police officer, driven to court, and placed in the cells. She saw a duty solicitor and gave him the relevant correspondence. Miss D was subsequently given bail and allowed to leave in the afternoon.
In February 2008 the local authority’s solicitors wrote to the court, making a formal request to withdraw the proceedings. On 8 April Miss D’s solicitors wrote to the Ministry of Justice (the Ministry), setting out the background to her arrest and claiming compensation. Having received no reply from the Ministry, Miss D’s solicitors wrote to HMCS in July. The Customer Service Unit replied, acknowledging that the local authority’s solicitors had written to the court on 24 January 2008. The Unit said there had been ‘a short delay’ in dealing with the application to withdraw the warrant, during which time Miss D had presented herself at the local police station. As the warrant had not been withdrawn, the police had had no option but to arrest her. HMCS said that, if Miss D had contacted the court direct, instead of the police, any outstanding issues could have been resolved without her being arrested. (HMCS did not explain how Miss D was supposed to know that she should contact them rather than the police.) There was, HMCS said, no evidence of maladministration on their part, and they rejected Miss D’s claim for compensation. They ended by suggesting – wrongly – that Miss D’s solicitors re-direct their complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman.
In October 2008 Miss D’s Member of Parliament contacted HMCS about her case. HMCS replied that they were sorry to hear of Miss D’s experience, but a full investigation by their Customer Service Unit had found no evidence of clerical error. They said that the Unit was the final tier of the internal complaint handling process, and signposted the Member to the Ombudsman’s Office if he thought the matter merited further investigation.
What we investigated
We investigated Miss D’s complaint that HMCS had failed to act on the request to withdraw the arrest warrant. We also investigated HMCS’s handling of Miss D’s complaint, which she said had not been given full and proper consideration to the extent that she felt ‘fobbed off’.
Miss D sought compensation for her unnecessary, awful and embarrassing experience.
What our investigation found
HMCS did not ‘get it right’, nor were they ‘open and accountable’ when they failed to act on receipt of the fax from the solicitors asking them to withdraw the arrest warrant. They showed no proper regard for Miss D’s rights, nor did they handle the information they had been sent properly and appropriately. An apparent shortage of staff at the time did not excuse HMCS from such a basic responsibility.
HMCS did not handle Miss D’s subsequent complaint about her experience well and they failed to act ‘fairly and proportionately’. There was no apology for the fact that no one had responded to her previous complaint; they did not explain that the Customer Service Unit was the final stage in their complaints procedure; and they suggested that the solicitors contact the Local Government Ombudsman, who has no jurisdiction over HMCS. Instead of focusing on the events that led to Miss D’s arrest, HMCS simply denied that she had been ‘unlawfully’ arrested, which was an unnecessarily legalistic approach, which took no account of the administrative nature of her complaint. HMCS did not give proper consideration to all the relevant information and, in particular, they do not appear to have considered carefully when it was that they received the request to withdraw the warrant, and when they ought to have acted on that information. Finally, they inappropriately suggested that Miss D bore some responsibility for her arrest because she had gone to the police station rather than to the court.
The actions of HMCS amounted to maladministration.
Consequences
Miss D was arrested unnecessarily as a direct result of HMCS’s mistake, and was caused a great deal of avoidable distress. As someone with bipolar disorder, depression could aggravate her condition. She told us that she had found it extremely difficult to cope in the morning after her arrest and had started to ‘lose it’. She recalled sobbing on the floor of the cell. HMCS’s poor complaint handling added to Miss D’s distress: not only did they deny that they were at fault, they also sought to shift some of the blame to Miss D.
We upheld Miss D’s complaint.
Resolution
During our investigation, HMCS offered Miss D a £250 consolatory payment. That did not fully recognise the impact on her of their maladministration and so we recommended:
- that the Chief Executive of HMCS send Miss D a personal, written apology; and
- that HMCS make her a consolatory payment of £1,500.
HMCS agreed to implement our recommendations. They also told us that since January 2008 there had been a change in management and staff had been given training, which had included guidance on identifying priority work. HMCS also said that they now had capacity for cover in the event of staff shortages.
