Editorial

In the Spotlight: HMCTS

HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS), working with Kainos and Microsoft, has adopted a platform engineering approach to accelerate digital justice services, enabling faster delivery, improved developer productivity, and large-scale transformation of the UK justice system.

Posted 13 April 2026 by Christine Horton

Challenge

HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) is responsible for delivering justice services across England and Wales, spanning criminal, civil, and family courts as well as tribunals. As part of a major reform programme, the organisation set out to digitise services that had historically relied on paper-based processes.

However, as digital transformation progressed, new challenges emerged. With around 700 developers working across multiple programmes, the existing development model began to create bottlenecks. Platform limitations slowed delivery, increased complexity, and reduced productivity across teams.

Developers often had to repeat infrastructure work, navigate siloed systems, and deal with inefficient processes, making it harder to scale digital services effectively.

Solution

To address these challenges, HMCTS partnered with Kainos to implement a platform engineering model, built on Microsoft Azure.

The approach shifted from a traditional “DevOps by team” model to a platform-as-a-product strategy, where shared tools, services, and infrastructure are centrally developed and made available to teams through self-service.

The platform includes:

  • Reusable APIs and infrastructure components
  • Automation and self-service tooling
  • Documentation, training, and developer support
  • Standardised environments to reduce duplication

This enables developers to focus on building services rather than managing infrastructure, improving both speed and quality of delivery.

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The solution is built on a modern cloud-native architecture using Microsoft Azure services, including:

  • containerisation and cloud hosting
  • automated deployment pipelines
  • data storage, networking, and caching services
  • AI-enabled tools within a governed framework.

A key principle is reusability and automation, allowing teams to access standardised components rather than rebuilding systems from scratch.

Results

The platform engineering approach has delivered significant measurable improvements:

  • 700 developers supported at peak usage
  • £14.7 million estimated annual cost savings through efficiency gains
  • 3000 percent improvement in deployment lead times (from ~120 hours to as little as 1-4 hours)
  • 4900 percent increase in deployment frequency, enabling continuous delivery of services.

Additional benefits include:

  • Reduced duplication and operational inefficiencies
  • Improved developer experience and productivity
  • Faster rollout of digital justice services
  • Greater scalability across multiple programmes.

Next steps

HMCTS continues to expand its digital transformation programme, using platform engineering as a foundation for future innovation.

The platform enables the organisation to scale services more effectively, integrate emerging technologies such as AI, and continue improving access to justice for citizens. As demand grows and services evolve, the model provides a sustainable way to deliver high-quality digital public services at scale.
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