Communicourt was founded by Naomi Mason in 2011. An experienced Speech & Language Therapist and Registered Intermediary (RI), Naomi began assisting individuals in criminal proceedings, and became aware of the (often considerable and unaddressed) communication needs of defendants in those cases. Naomi launched Communicourt to help address those needs and to support the equal participation of those individuals.
Today, we have grown to become the largest provider of court appointed intermediary services in England and Wales, working in a wide range of legal settings, from criminal and family proceedings, to employment and immigration tribunals. Our mission, in every case, is to help ensure that court users with communication needs have equal access to justice.
“Communicourt will continue to campaign
for greater access to support – we want to
secure a future that ensures a fair system for all.”
William Scrimshire, Managing Director, Communicourt
Communicourt intermediaries
Our intermediaries are communication specialists, who work with court users who have communication differences or difficulties, to help them understand and participate in the legal processes they are going through.
We recruit our intermediaries from a range of professional disciplines, including speech and language therapy and psychology. All Communicourt intermediaries complete our 6-9 month training programme, and must undertake continued professional development (CPD) after completion of the programme. We provide regular evening and weekend training to our team. Our intermediaries work as part of small teams, each supported by both a mentor and manager, receiving regular supervision sessions and support on demand.
The intermediary role
Our role is impartial, and our duty is to the court. We receive referrals directly from solicitors and the courts, and funding from HMCTS for most family court and criminal trials (where the court user has Legal Aid). For criminal assessments, funding is typically through Legal Aid.
Our intermediaries are appointed by the court to facilitate communication with a service user. This includes carrying out detailed assessments to understand any provisions or adaptations that can be made to help them participate in the proceedings. Our reports will recommend whether or not an intermediary is likely to support a court user’s effective participation. They will also (in most cases) also recommend a range of adjustments the court can make to support participation (even in ~22% of cases in which we do not recommend an intermediary attends hearings).
In addition to understanding evidence in live court, service users may also need help to understand the weight of the evidence, the inferences which may be drawn, understand the complexities of threshold or a plea, and be able to provide informed instructions to their legal team.
HMCTS Managed and Approved Service Providers (MASPs)
Communicourt is a Managed and Approved Service Provider of intermediary services for HMCTS. This means that our service is regulated by the Ministry of Justice, and HMCTS has access to key data and information about our service (such as our training programme and how we background check our intermediaries). This framework assures the quality of our service and standardises the rates paid to all MASP intermediary services.
