Research Secretariat acts as the point of contact for non-DCA funded researchers (largely government funded and academic researchers) who want to carry out research in courts other than coroners' courts.
You should speak to us if you want to:
look at court files
observe court business
interview court staff, users, or members of the judiciary.
The procedure for granting permission for research in the courts usually involves consultation with at least three other offices within the department, so it can take some time. You should therefore build this into your research timetable and make sure you come to us in good time for the beginning of your research.
It is also important that any information you provide us with is part of the final plan for the project, since if anything changes we may have to restart the access procedure from the beginning.
In general you should come to us once you have secured funding, as proposals can change during funding negotiations. However, if you want to discuss your plans, please get in touch.
An access request can have up to four stages:
Consultation with Policy Divisions. The main purpose of this is to find out whether the proposed research duplicates any research currently being conducted; whether it is factually sound; and whether there are any imminent changes in the law or the administration of the courts that could make the research redundant.
Consultation with Operations Divisions. The purpose of this is to establish that the proposed research is feasible, practical, and won't unfairly burden court staff.
Senior Judicial Approval.
Privileged Access Agreement (PAA). If the research will involve looking at court files or recording other restricted information a PAA will be issued by the Court Service Record Management Service. This is a binding agreement between the researchers and the department that the research will fully anonymise all information collected, and that certain other safeguards will be met. It is to protect sensitive information under the terms of the Data Protection Act.
Once your research proposal is finalised you should send a copy of it to us, including the methodology and full details of:
Which courts you are planning to work in, and over what period of time.
How many court files you plan to look at and how you plan to identify them.
What court work you plan to observe, how you plan to go about this, and how you will make sure that court users, staff, and members of the judiciary are not inconvenienced.
What questionnaires and interviews you are planning, and what questions you plan to ask of whom.
Who will be involved in the research. If a PAA is needed it must include the names of everyone doing the research: anyone not named on the PAA will not be able to do work in the courts.
Once we have this information we will do our very best to deal with your access request as quickly as possible.
Because of the procedures involved, it is unlikely you will get a PAA in less than 13 weeks of providing us with full finalised details of your research. To facilitate this process you should consider the following questions in drawing up your proposal:
Does your research involve looking at court files?
Court staff are pressed for time, and extracting court files can take up significant amounts of time. You should therefore consider:
Are there any other sources from which you can get the same information? Are there collections of statistics you could use, or would files with the information you need be available from solicitors' firms or other legal service providers?
How are you going to identify the files you want to look at? If you can provide case numbers, finding the file is relatively straightforward; less specific searches are less likely to be approved because the courts do not have the resources to select case files for studies.
Is the number of files you plan to look at reasonable and proportionate to the aims of your research?
Does your research involve observation of court processes?
If you want to observe hearings in open court you are, like all members of the public, welcome. In other cases you will need special permission.
You should be aware that there are restrictions on the types of records that can be taken of any court hearing (no audio recording, for example), and be sympathetic to the needs and wishes of the parties and staff.
We strongly advise consultation with members of the judiciary involved before you start, and you should be aware that the parties may object to your presence in court, and that the judge may not allow it.
Does your research involve asking questions of court users, staff, or members of the judiciary?
You should consider whether you wish to use survey questionnaires or conduct interviews.
In general more senior members of the judiciary prefer to be interviewed, but you should be wary of expecting to take too much of their time. There are various restrictions on the participation of court users:
Court staff cannot give personal details of court users. If you want to invite users to take part in your research you should provide postage paid letters, whose contents will have been formally approved by the Court Service, to be addressed and distributed by court staff. You should bear in mind the time it takes to do this.
You should be aware of the sensitivity of talking to court users - we cannot agree to researchers doing anything that might cause distress.
You will not be able to communicate with juries.
We hope that this will help you to prepare your access request and look forward to hearing from you.