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From: " "< . @gmail.com>

To: "HMCTS Customer Service (Correspondence)" <ComplaintsCorres&LT@hmcts.gsi.gov.uk>
Cc: <melanie.onn.mp@parliament.uk>
Attach: Complaint appeal stage - Mr .pdf
Sent: 26 April 2017 21:34
Subject: Re: Complaint appeal stage - Mr

Dear Mr Redgrave

Re: Grimsby Magistrates' court Complaint - Submitted 25 June 2016

Thank you for your letter of 6 April 2017 which sets out your findings to my concerns. I apologies for the delay
in responding - this has been due to several deadline obligations arising from matters I have become
embroiled in as a result of the issues of this complaint.

I appreciate that there has been a degree of recognition in the fact that the complaint has overall been upheld
and a sum of compensation offered for the poor service and the frustration and inconvenience experienced.
However, I perceive what is described as 'poor level of service' to be far more serious than that and the
inconvenience would more appropriately be termed gross injustice.

I had anticipated that any consolatory payment which might be deemed appropriate would not go a fraction of
the way to compensate for the amount of time and effort that has been necessary to dedicated to this matter.
The inordinate number of hours consumed has extended far beyond that attributable to the difficulties with the
court. Though this element is obviously the most significant, the direct engagement with HMCTS pales in
comparison with all other public bodies that it has been necessary to deal with relating to the issues that
concern this complaint.

If it could be quantified in monetary terms, the cost (including potential loss of earnings) if aggregated over the
years for the gross inconvenience of having to deal with the negligence would amount to thousands of
pounds. However, if all the public authorities which it has been necessary to involve were factored in it would
increase the burden tenfold. Though for someone in my financial situation the amount offered is not
insignificant, it only represents around 1 per cent of an amount that would realistically compensate for the
overall injustice. It is therefore only on the basis that I would rather be paid the amount offered than not that I
accept the total sum of 750.

I am not satisfied that the full extent of the injustice has been recognised nor responsibility for it fully accepted
and will therefore be asking my MP to refer my concerns to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. You will no doubt
appreciate that I find the continued denial regarding my assertions about the undelivered items of post not
being sent irrational. In light of my representations and on the balance of probability the letters will not have
been posted (ten letters neither delivered nor returned), I find the view inappropriate that HMCTS has not
seen any reason to believe that the letters were not posted to me. It is not so much the reason that HMCTS
needs to look for to believe that the letters were not posted (though it should be discovered) but whether on
the evidence and probability it is credible that they were not.

The amount in contention only 60

Though it has been acknowledged that applying to the court to state a case was my right, it would be naive of
me not to have wondered if the unnecessary reference to the amount in contention (60.00) was for the
purposes of implying the matter did not warrant an appeal to the high court. In case this was implied I consider
it necessary to briefly defend the decision with a number of reasons justifying why pursuing the matter was not
frivolous.

Firstly, the council had weighed up the pros and cons about taking me to court (for the same amount) and
therefore could not itself have considered going to these lengths to be frivolous. If the amount was
significant to the council then for an individual in receipt of no income it stands to reason that sum was more
significant to me. The council had been informed that the outstanding debt had been paid and an
additional sum exceeding the cost incurred by the council for instituting the summons. The council is restricted
by law to claim no more than is reasonably incurred (it is an automated process). Extensive representations
had been submitted to justify why the 10 sum would cover the aggregate of the 3 court fee and out of
pocket expense of postage etc. for the summons issue, yet the council chose to pursue the matter in the court
to enable it to enforce an unwarranted additional 60 when it could have considered the matter closed.

Rather than the sum contended being the central matter, the true focus of the appeal was on the council
routinely claiming expenditure unlawfully in respect of many thousands of cases each year and clearly a

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matter of public importance.

Among reasons why the judiciary should have welcomed the appeal being presented was the fact that the
standard summons charge had been determined from a decision (public consultation) relating to the council's
2012 budget-setting. The decision was taken to front load all the cost of the court case to the cost of merely
issuing a summons, forecasted to raise 0.752 million additional revenue over four years (the summons
increased from 32 to 70). Details of the outcome to the public consultation showed that the majority of
respondents favoured generating income this way than the alternative proposals to introduce a charge for
replacement bins or garden waste collections. The costs appeared to have been manipulated for an unlawful
purpose therefore it was only reasonable to ask a court to adjudicate on the matter. On being advised by the
Magistrates court it was learned that a Liability Order can only be challenged by an appeal to the High Court
by way of either a case stated on a point of law or a judicial review.

It is useful, particularly for billing authorities that seem to get away with routinely picking the pockets of its
'customers' to be able to present to those unhappy being swindled, the only option to "lumping it" being to
challenge their actions in the high court. Councils know that those most likely to be victims will be the easiest
to obstruct access to justice because unless a solicitor is appointed (an unaffordable luxury) the
unrepresented litigant can evidently be ignored.

Not pursuing a copy of the case stated

I consider HMCTS unjustified to imply I should take some responsibility for its failure. A copy of the final case
was not pursued for over two years because I was unaware one had allegedly been sent. This period is
implied to be the time I was pursuing the complaint about the judiciary between 2014 and 2016. The period
incidentally that I did not directly pursue the court for the final case was for just over a year and a half, not for
over two years. It is also of note that the process of the judicial complaint including the Judicial Ombudsman's
involvement reported on page 16 of its 2015-16 Annual Report (re service fell below...) was unacceptable as
was the first stage of the present HMCTS complaint that was referred to the Justices' Clerk to address.

The final time I had contacted the Justices' Clerk (up until pursuing the judicial complaint) was 9 July 2014
when I had written to enquire into whether HMCTS had any arrangements in place to restrict my contact with
the court after receiving no reply to requesting the production of a Certificate of refusal to state a case. The
next time was 25 February 2016 on receiving the Judicial Ombudsman's 23 February 2016 email to which
was attached copies of three of the undelivered letters. One dated 16 September 2014 was a response to the
Judicial complaint in which it stated that a certificate of refusal to state a case was not issued by the Justices
because they did state a case which had been sent to me. I therefore asked in my 25 February email to the
Justices Clerk that the final case was sent (I had never received it) in order that the application to the High
Court may be proceeded with.

I also think that the lengths to which I had already gone and failed to get any cooperation would give me
enough reason to believe that the obstruction was deliberate and would not be assisted however many times I
tried to contact anyone. From August 2013 when the representations upon the draft case were submitted up
until September 2014 (Advisory Committee complaint), the Court was contacted a total nine times in
connection with obtaining the finalised document. All communications were ignored except one (6 March
2014) to which Mrs Watts replied with an undertaking to have written communication setting out the position
with the case and advising of the next steps. This undertaking was never acted on.

It is the opinion of HMCTS that I should have contacted the High Court to explain the difficulties I was
having. This is exactly what I had done initially when my communications were ignored which led to the High
Court advising that the appropriate avenue would be by judicial review. To have done as suggested (again)
would effectively have meant pursuing another judicial review claim for a mandatory order because the
previous claim had been closed on the basis that it had succeeded in the Magistrates' court undertaking to
proceed with the case. There are limits to how far one is expected to go and it should be reasonably
obvious for anyone to see that those limits had long been reached and pursuing the Judicial Complaint was
the most that could have been done under the circumstances to obtain answers.

Financial barrier to progress appeal and ongoing consequences

Even though the final case has been obtained I am still no nearer an outcome. As my 19 March 2017
submission explained, the 100% fee remission I was entitled to due to my financial circumstances was no
longer applicable because the criteria on which entitlement to fee remission applied had changed and fees
were payable in full. Due to the unacceptable number of years it has taken to obtain the final case stated there
is now a financial barrier to progress the matter which did not exist when the appeal was embarked upon.
Paragraphs 32 to 37 of the complaint explains in detail but this matter was not addressed and no solution
offered.

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I am left in a position with the council, even knowing it is in the wrong, unwilling to take steps to remedy the
situation because presumably it considers to be under no obligation unless the high court orders it to. Since
the disputed sum has been outstanding on my Council Tax account, the council has misallocated payment
causing the year's account which was current at the time to be in arrears on 3 separate occasions. A
computer generated letter received in April 2013 threatened summons costs of 70, instalment facility
withdrawal etc. Monies were eventually re-allocated so the account no longer in default and the threat of court
/ recovery action ceased but not until I had involved the Local Government Ombudsman.

The next time it more seriously resulted in a summons being served for non-payment, when again, payments
were up to date. A letter received in October 2014 threatened the usual but because the council failed to
respond to my letter explaining I had paid, further costs were added and a summons served. It was not until
27 days after it was contacted that the council replied simply stating that the payments had been reallocated,
there was no longer need to go to court, the costs had been removed and the summons withdrawn. However,
it required writing repeatedly and reporting the incident to the police via the website Action Fraud before it
remedied its mistake.

The most recent allocation error resulted in the council obtaining a liability order in October 2015 with the
addition of summons costs and several hundred pounds bailiff fees which it has refused to remedy because it
considers its actions legitimate (the court endorsed them). The consequences have been horrendous
principally because the council presented perjured evidence to the court to persuade the judge that it was
entitled to allocate payment to the disputed costs (leaving the balance of the years account that should have
been reduced in default). The Council had suspended recovery of the sum being appealed in the high court
until the case had been determined, however, it falsely claimed in its signed statement of truth that it believed
the appeal had been withdrawn therefore the disputed costs were no longer suspended. The appeal had
never been withdrawn and it is beyond all reasonable doubt that the council knew it had not been withdrawn
from incriminating evidence accompanying its witness statement.

The council was caught red-handed yet its Corporate Fraud team, police, etc., have allegedly found no
evidence of dishonesty even though the documented proof is conclusive.

It can be seen that during the period HMCTS has taken into account that I did not pursue the court for a copy
of the final case, I had plenty of other injustices to contend with that resulted from the maladministration. Time
consuming and fruitless disputes i.e., formal complaints escalating to the LGO, police, police appeals and
entering into a private prosecution against the police for negligence have all been undertaken as well as
pursuing additional judicial complaints which had arisen because of the judge's complicity (and other
misconduct) surrounding the false statement.

With the number of people this matter must have been considered by it is staggering that it has not at any
point fallen in the hands of someone capable of appreciating the impossibility of the situation who has had the
good sense and the authority to find a way of bypassing the obstacles to have the appeal dealt with. The fact
that is has not is an indication that the person responsible for obstructing the appeal may be someone more
senior than the Justices Clerk. I consider this matter requires far more investigation as I'm unable to settle for
being caused such unquantifiable injustice over the protracted period without finding out the real reason for
the gross failure that prevented the appeal reaching a conclusion.

Yours sincerely

02/04/2017