3 February 2015 by Monidipa Fouzder
Leading judge
bemoans ‘serial failures’ over interpreting
The
outsourcing giant contracted to provide court interpreting services has been
ordered to pay costs to a local authority over ‘serial failures’ in a family
case.
Sir
James Munby, president of the Family Division, ordered Capita Translation and
Interpreting to pay Kent County Council (pictured) the sum of £13,338.15 within
seven days in respect of costs of hearings on 7 May and 14 November 2014.
Munby
was forced to adjourn a final adoption hearing on 7 May after no one attended
to translate for Slovak-speaking parents.
In
an approved judgment published yesterday, Munby said two interpreters had been
booked on 14 April, but at 2pm on 6 May the court was informed by Capita TI
that no interpreters were available for the hearing.
‘This
was done by an automatically generated email which included the words “we
apologise for any inconvenience caused” – a banal and formulaic statement
hardly reflecting the fact that a failure to provide interpreters, particular
in a case such as this, causes much more than “inconvenience” to all concerned,
not least to the anxious parents,’ he said.
Munby
said there had been ‘serial failures by Capita in this case against a
background of wider systemic problems’.
‘In
this case, the failures… were… not minor but extensive, and, at two different
stages of the litigation, they had a profound effect on the conduct of
proceedings.’
However,
Munby emphasised that he was not saying Capita should automatically be blamed
each time an interpreter fails to turn up.
‘Nor
am I to be understood as suggesting that Capita will be liable for each and
every failure to provide a Slovak interpreter, lamentable though its failures
to provide such interpreters were in this particular case and, seemingly, more
generally. Everything will depend upon the precise circumstances of the
particular case.’
Munby
refused permission for Capita TI to appeal.
No comments:
Post a Comment