Civil justice statistics in Scotland: 2019-2020

2. Recent trends of civil law court cases

This chapter examines the evidence from courts data of the effect of court reforms in recent years.

Between 2010-11 and 2012-13, the number of cases initiated in the sheriff courts fell by 21% (excluding summary applications^[2]) (Table 1 & Figure 3). Cases in the Court of Session saw a more fluctuating trend.

From 2012-13 to 2015-16, the total number of initiated cases across all courts was stable at around 77,000 until a decrease of 5% to 73,600 in 2016-17.

The total number of civil cases initiated in the courts increased in 2019-20, up 3% on the total for 2018-19, reversing the 11% decrease seen last year. There was an even split of case types either increasing or decreasing from the previous year. Increases were seen in damages (up 23%), repossessions (up 18%) and debt (up 16%). Decreases were recorded in evictions (down 15%), family and personal injury (both down by 6%) (see section 3.2 for more information).

The main contributors for the increase in initiations in 2019-20 are debt and damages actions, up 4,800 and 700 cases respectively. Debt actions reversed the drop in volumes recorded last year. Case numbers appear to be stabilising to levels seen prior to introduction of simple procedure in 2016 (Table 12). On the other hand, evictions decreased for the second year running, with a similar margin to that recorded in 2018-19.

In the following sections we examine these trends further in the context of the reforms of civil courts proceedings discussed in chapter ^[4].

2.1 Courts and procedures

In 2019-20, 69,042 cases were initiated in the sheriff courts and 58,794 were disposed. This represents a 4% increase in initiations and a 3% decrease in disposals on the previous year (Table 3).

However, the increase in initiations was not observed across all procedures in the sheriff courts. The numbers of summary cause procedures decreased by 11% from 2018-19. Small claims procedures decreased too as expected, and these are almost entirely replaced by the simple procedure (a large proportion of the remaining few cases relate to EU small claims cases).

2019-20 is the third full year of phase one simple procedure, and saw 32,345 cases initiated, and 28,250 disposed of. There was a 14% increase in initiated cases from 2018-19, while disposals were down by 5%.

The simple procedure has absorbed nearly all small claims and summary cause cases for debt and damages actions (Table 12 and Table 19). Since we only have three years' worth of simple procedure data, the trend in case volumes is not yet clear.

A further 3,220 cases were initiated in the national Sheriff Personal Injury Court, a 10% decrease on 2018-19 (Table 18). Many of the cases pursued in the Sheriff Personal Injury Court would likely have been initiated at the Court of Session, which has seen a corresponding fall in the number of cases initiated since the institution of the new court (Table 1).

While business levels have increased by 3% across all courts since 2018-19, the number of cases initiated at the Court of Session decreased by 5% to 2,172 in 2019-20.

Combined, the simple procedure and Sheriff Personal Injury Court accounted for 48% of all civil court business, up from 44% in 2018-19.

The relative costs of these procedures is provided on the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service website^[3].

2.2 Judicial review

The Court of Session deals with judicial review. This is a specialised type of court procedure that can be used to challenge the way a person or body with power or authority has made a decision if no other remedy is possible.

There were 362 judicial review cases initiated in 2019-20, a 10% decrease on 2018-19 (Table 25). Between 2015-16 and 2016-17 there was a large decrease, explained in part due to a rise in number of judicial reviews in the preceding year, ahead of the reform. The number of judicial reviews initiated at the Petition Department of the Court of Session has been variable over time.

2.3 Appeals

Sheriff Appeal Court (Civil)

In 2019-20, 294 cases were initiated and 168 disposed of (Table 26). Compared to 2018-19, the number of initiated cases increased by 11% while disposed cases decreased by 17%.

Prior to January 2016, appeals would have been directed to the Court of Session, thereby entailing higher costs and possibly taking longer to determine. There has been a decrease in the appeals made from the sheriff courts, but numbers are small: for the last five years there were 42, 18, 31, 21 and 21 respectively (Table S8 Supplementary statistics tables). The last four years correspond to when the Sheriff Appeal Court operated for full financial years.

Appeals from Court of Session to the UK Supreme Court

In 2019-20, 15 civil law applications were initiated under the provisions for bringing appeals to the UK Supreme Court (Table 27). During this period, 16 applications were disposed of by the Inner House of the Court of Session (one granted, 14 refused and one withdrawn).

In 2019-20, of the 15 cases disposed of by the Supreme Court for permission to appeal (having been initially refused by the Inner House in Scotland), three were granted and 12 were refused^[4].