HM Courts & Tribunals Service

As a key tenet of this transformation, we worked with HMCTS to overcome a deeply embedded legacy technology estate – migrating 37 applications to the cloud, re‑architecting eleven business‑critical systems, and decommissioning more than 30 applications. Together, we have established a controlled approach to tackling these legacy systems, reducing risk, and unlocking lasting benefits for citizens and court staff.

Improving access to justice at a national scale

HMCTS plays a critical role at the heart of public life, ensuring that justice can be accessed fairly, consistently, and efficiently across England and Wales. When it embarked on its £1bn Reform Programme – one of the most ambitious digital transformations in UK Government – the goal was clear: new digital services, modern case management platforms, and redesigned user journeys would make the justice system simpler to use, quicker to navigate, and more resilient for the future.

Underpinning this ambition lay a complex, almost invisible challenge. Alongside the modern services being introduced sat a sprawling legacy technology estate – hundreds of applications, many undocumented, running on end‑of‑life infrastructure, and deeply embedded in critical court operations. These systems were largely outside the scope of the original Reform Programme and were expected either to adapt over time or quietly retire.

Instead, they became harder to ignore. As new digital services were layered on top, dependencies between old and new systems increased, operational risk grew, and the cost of maintaining ageing technology escalated. What had once been a background issue began to threaten the pace, confidence, and long‑term value of reform.

Confronting hidden risk without slowing transformation

HMCTS faced a pressing question – how to continue delivering large‑scale digital change while managing an ageing, business‑critical legacy estate at the same time. The organisation could not simply switch off these systems; many supported statutory processes, long‑term data retention obligations, and everyday court operations.

Early on, our teams recognised that the visible issues – rising costs, supplier dependency, inconsistent documentation, and application fragility – were symptoms of a deeper, structural problem: unmanaged technology obsolescence. Without a way to understand the true risk and value of each system, decision‑making remained reactive, and investment was hard to prioritise with confidence.

Our architects and technology leaders worked alongside HMCTS to make this problem visible and tangible. By quantifying risk and articulating the consequences of inaction, we helped shift the conversation from firefighting individual issues to addressing root causes. As our architecture and complex transformations expert, Steve Killelay reflected, “the challenge was not a lack of ambition, but a lack of clarity – and clarity had to come first.”

Taking a disciplined approach to legacy modernisation

We developed a digital twin of the enterprise using Ardoq; essential for establishing a shared, evidence‑based view of the technology estate. Working collaboratively with HMCTS teams, we assessed every application against its strategic purpose, technical health, and business criticality. This enabled leaders to set clear “application destinies” – whether to retire, replace, modernise, migrate, or sustain – grounded in both business value and risk.

To support this, we built a risk‑scoring framework into Ardoq, quantifying factors such as security vulnerabilities, operational criticality, user population, and technology obsolescence. Our architecture and complex transformations expert Steve Killelay described this as a turning point: “it replaced subjective debate with objective insight and gave HMCTS a defensible basis for investment decisions.”

From there, we helped HMCTS move at scale. Rather than treating hundreds of systems as bespoke problems, we applied repeatable methods to stabilise, modernise, or retire applications in parallel. Low‑code development became a powerful enabler, allowing smaller, tactical systems to be rapidly redeveloped into a governed environment, reducing risk without over‑engineering solutions.

A critical breakthrough came through the design and delivery of a secure archiving and records management platform. This allowed HMCTS to retain data in line with statutory obligations, while finally decoupling it from ageing applications – unlocking safe decommissioning and enabling progress that had previously been blocked for years.

Delivering resilience, confidence, and better outcomes for users

The impact of this approach has been substantial. So far, we have supported HMCTS to migrate 37 applications from legacy hosting to the cloud, re‑architect 11 business‑critical systems, establish an enterprise‑scale data and records management capability, and decommission more than 30 applications. Crucially, this was achieved while maintaining business continuity across courts and tribunals.

Beyond the numbers, the wider value lies in restored confidence and control. HMCTS moved from reacting to legacy risk to actively managing it, aligning technology decisions to user outcomes and long‑term strategy.

For citizens, this means more resilient services, fewer disruptions, and a justice system better equipped to meet their needs – today and for years to come.