Cayman Islands Auditor General, Sue Winspear, appears to have had some difficulty in coming to positive conclusions in her recent report that centred mainly on the lower Summary Courts. We published the summary of her Report on iNews two days ago.

“The need for a new court house is not in question as the current court facilities are not fit for purpose,” she wrote, “However, the Outline Business Case for the project is still in draft form and there are a number of significant gaps in the information presented. There is no recent analysis of current and future workload that justifies the need for the number of court rooms being proposed.”

The following are some of her complaints:

There is very limited performance information available and what is available is not being used to understand, manage or improve its performance.

Judicial Administration does not record its expenditure by type of court, despite the budget being set in this way, or calculate the cost per case. The lack of performance and financial information means that is difficult to assess the overall efficiency and effectiveness of Summary Courts or Judicial Administration,

The courts are in the process of upgrading their IT systems that has the potential to improve efficiency of operations. However, there is no business case documenting the costs and intended benefits of the new system. There will be no way of knowing the extent to which it contributes to improvements in efficiency, or whether it has delivered value for money.

The introduction of the new IT system will impact other agencies, such as the police and prosecutors. However, the courts plan to restrict access to its own staff,.That could still undermine its efficiency.

Unpaid traffic tickets have increased by 30% adding to the workload of defence attorneys that may not be sufficient to deal with it and the other host of criminal matters. Winspear has no way of knowing.

There is no information collected on significant issues impacting efficiency.

No information collected on its own workforce to determine how many people will be needed to staff it nor what skills will be required for the new courts and what will be the future demand for its services.

Nine recommendations were made to help improve things.

We will have to wait with bated breath to see when, or if, any of these recommendations will ever be executed.

It might take a High Court Judge to rule on that.