Courts hit by case management system delay

Troubled Libra rollout is making collection of fines more difficult, says government watchdog

Delays implementing a new case management system for the Courts Service is hampering the efficient collection of fines imposed by magistrates, according to the National Audit Office.

As a result, the collection of fines remains dependent on three obsolete systems costing £23m a year to run - with funding for upgrading them withdrawn because of the planned introduction of the new Libra system.

The implementation of Libra phase one, intended to provide new case facilities, links to agencies such as the police, TV licensing and the DVLA, and for management and enforcement of fine accounts, will not be completed until 2007. The contract for Libra was let in 1998, but has already doubled its cost to £400m.

A pilot has been run at Kingston-on-Thames Magistrates Court since December last year.

The strategy for phase two has been revised so that roll-out is incremental rather than simultaneous across the country.

The delays have caused problems with the implementation of the Courts Act requiring resource-intensive manual workarounds because the legacy IT systems cannot support sanctions which were designed to be implemented using Libra phase two.

Problems with existing legacy systems include difficulties interrogating information by individual because it is held on cases, delays compiling performance data because this requires manual systems, problems checking the payment history of an offender because of the lack of a central database and an inability to verify identity in court by using databases held by other agencies to check addresses and National Insurance numbers.