TCAP confirms that a completed Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman complaint has now been submitted to the office of Alan Strickland MP for referral.
The complaint concerns HMCTS administration and complaint handling in Employment Tribunal case 6019060/2024. It is not an appeal, it does not ask PHSO to overturn the Tribunal judgment, and it does not ask the Ombudsman to investigate judges.
Instead, the complaint concerns the machinery around the case: file handling, portal opacity, complaint routing, reasonable-adjustment administration, asymmetrical treatment, unanswered questions, and the way HMCTS dealt with a disabled litigant in person while the proceedings remained live.
That distinction matters because the accountability dodge sits inside it.
The Complaint Now Before My MP
What has been placed before Alan Strickland MP’s office is a complaint about the administrative handling of my Employment Tribunal case.
I repeatedly asked what was actually on the Tribunal file. I wanted to know whether my submissions had been received, whether they had been placed before the Judge, whether respondent applications were formally on file, and whether late respondent material had altered the record I was expected to meet.
Those were not abstract legal questions. They were basic participation questions.
A disabled litigant in person facing strike-out and costs should not have to guess what documents the Tribunal has, what documents it does not have, or what material the Judge is being asked to consider. Yet instead of clarity, I encountered file opacity, portal uncertainty, late material, respondent-side expansion and complaint-routing sludge.
None of that answered the question that mattered.
What was on the file?
Why The Escalation Matters
The complaint has now reached the MP referral stage because HMCTS did not resolve the administrative problems cleanly. Instead, the process blurred administrative failure with judicial comment.
That matters because HMCTS cannot investigate judges. PHSO cannot investigate judges either. Judicial conduct belongs, in principle, with the JCIO.
Once judicial comment entered an HMCTS administrative complaint, part of the complaint became something the complainant could not properly challenge inside that route. The practical result was not accountability, but a dead zone.
That dead zone is central to the escalation.
The Miranda Charters Accountability Dodge
The clearest example is the Miranda Charters and Employment Judge T.R. Smith episode.
Miranda Charters was already part of the HMCTS complaint-handling picture. She then reappeared in Tribunal Office correspondence transmitting judicial comment from Employment Judge T.R. Smith.
That did not simply answer an administrative complaint. It imported judicial framing into it.
The correspondence reduced my disability-discrimination recruitment claim to a complaint that I “did not get a job”. It described me as the “principle culprit” for the size of the file and fed the claimant-blame narrative while the administrative complaint, file-handling dispute and live proceedings were all still moving.
This was not neutral complaint administration.
It gave a judge a voice inside an HMCTS complaint route that HMCTS itself says cannot investigate judges. Judicial commentary entered the complaint, hardened the narrative, and then sat beyond effective challenge inside the very process that had allowed it in.
That is the trick.
Introduce judicial commentary into the complaint. It doesn’t matter how accurate it was. Or even what it said. It could have claimed I was Big Foot. The simple fact that they brought a Judge into it was a deliberate posturing exercise. When the complainant challenges that contribution, HMCTS can retreat behind jurisdiction and say HMCTS cannot investigate judges.
Convenient.
The judge gets to shape the complaint context while the complainant is denied an effective route within that complaint to test the judicial contribution. That is how effective impunity is manufactured.
No dramatic conspiracy is required. The machinery does the work.
A judge enters the complaint. The complaint becomes judicially contaminated. HMCTS can then point to the contamination and say it cannot touch it.
Beautiful.
Many might not have seen the move. I did.
A Loophole With A Filing Tray
This is not some subtle constitutional puzzle. It is an accountability loophole with a name badge and a filing tray.
HMCTS says it cannot investigate judges. The JCIO can reject complaints that amount to disagreement with decisions or case management. The Tribunal can treat the issue as part of how the case was conducted.
Meanwhile, the administrative complaint is left carrying judicial comment that nobody inside the HMCTS route is willing or able to test.
Everyone points to another door, while nobody owns the contamination.
That’s not oversight. It is institutional laundering.
An administrative complaint goes in. Judicial commentary comes out. The complainant objects. HMCTS then says the judicial element is outside scope.
The process has converted an answerable administrative complaint into a jurisdictional escape room.
That is why the tactic matters.
Judges Are Not The HMCTS Complaints Department
Judges are not there to deal with HMCTS complaints. They are not customer investigators, administrative complaints officers, or a substitute for HMCTS answering basic service questions.
What was on the file? Which submissions were received? Which documents were visible to the Judge? What was missing from the portal? Which respondent applications were formally before the Tribunal? How were reasonable-adjustment concerns handled?
Those are administrative questions, and HMCTS should answer them.
Where the issue is judicial conduct, the JCIO route exists. Where the issue is appealable legal error, the appeal route exists.
What should not happen is the creation of a hybrid process in which judicial comment enters an HMCTS complaint and then becomes untouchable because it is judicial.
That is not a complaint route.
It is a jurisdictional trap.
The One-Party Conduct Process
The Ombudsman complaint also raises the wider asymmetry.
Respondent conduct was not background noise. It was central to the conditions under which the case developed.
There were repeated concerns about ambushes, aggression, misrepresentations, late material, out-of-scope bundles, respondent-curated files and expansion that directly affected the size and condition of the Tribunal record.
Yet the process increasingly focused on my conduct, my reaction, my tone, my correspondence, my blog, my distress and my alleged unreasonableness.
A case-ending process that focuses on one party’s conduct while leaving the other party’s conduct, bundles, ambushes and procedural games unresolved is not neutral administration. It is asymmetry wearing a court lanyard.
That asymmetry forms part of the complaint now placed before my MP.
PHSO is not being asked to overturn the judgment. The question is whether HMCTS administration allowed a one-sided conduct narrative to harden while failing to deal transparently with the file-handling and respondent-conduct issues I repeatedly raised.
The File Was Not A Neutral Object
The size of the file became part of the case against me, but that framing ignored how the file grew.
Respondent-side bundles, repeated procedural material, widened submissions, late evidence, historical correspondence and out-of-scope content all contributed to the volume. Even so, the blame settled on me.
The “principal culprit” language mattered because it simplified a complicated file history into a personal fault narrative.
Once that narrative hardened, every administrative concern became easier to dismiss. Questions about missing material became evidence that I sent too much. Portal opacity became another claimant problem. Late respondent material became something I should simply absorb.
Unsafe participation became refusal to engage. A complaint about administration became an attack on judicial case management.
That is how a file gets poisoned.
The Gender-Framing Problem
The complaint also addresses the January incident and the gender framing that followed.
The system treated the matter as though I had targeted a female judge. At the relevant time, I did not know whether Employment Judge Moss was male or female.
That fact matters because the gendered framing added moral colour to the narrative without properly testing the premise behind it.
Once a litigant in person is cast as the problem, every later complaint becomes easier to reclassify.
If the file is unclear, he is difficult. When submissions are missing, he sends too much. If the respondent ambushes him, he should cope. If participation becomes unsafe, he is refusing to engage.
When he complains about administration, the complaint is reframed as an attack on the judge.
The process becomes self-sealing.
What PHSO Is Being Asked To Investigate
The complaint asks PHSO to examine HMCTS administration and complaint handling, including:
- the failure to provide clear answers about the Tribunal file;
- the failure to confirm what material was on file;
- the failure to deal properly with portal opacity;
- the handling of disability and reasonable-adjustment concerns;
- the Miranda Charters and T.R. Smith incident;
- the introduction of judicial commentary into an HMCTS complaint;
- respondent-side late material and out-of-scope bundles;
- the handling of complaint references and complaint stages;
- the failure to scrutinise respondent-side conduct;
- the practical effect of contaminating an administrative complaint with material HMCTS could not then investigate.
That is the complaint.
It concerns the administration, not the appeal. It concerns the machinery around the judgment, not an attempt to ask PHSO to overturn it.
Most importantly, it concerns the loophole.
The MP Referral
Alan Strickland MP’s office confirmed the route. The completed complaint form must be checked, signed and referred to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman by the MP.
That referral material has now been prepared and submitted to his office.
The complaint bundle includes the completed form, supporting statement, core evidence and relevant HMCTS complaint history. It also asks PHSO to obtain the complete HMCTS complaint record rather than relying on a sanitised summary.
That matters because the full trail should show who said what, when they said it, how the complaint changed shape, and where judicial commentary entered an administrative route that could not properly test it.
Transparent
HMCTS cannot import judicial comment into an administrative complaint and then hide behind the rule that it cannot investigate judges.
That is not accountability. It is a conga line of jurisdictional dodging.
Administrative complaints should remain administrative. Judicial conduct belongs with the JCIO, while appealable errors belong in the appeal system.
Disabled litigants in person should not be blamed for administrative conditions they repeatedly warned about.
The PHSO complaint has now been placed before Alan Strickland MP for referral.
We will now see how much transparency survives contact with the file. Updates when available.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- HMCTS Complaints Procedure
- Parliamentary And Health Service Ombudsman : Complaining About UK Government Services
- Parliamentary And Health Service Ombudsman : How To Complain Through An MP
- Judicial Conduct Investigations Office
Documents Held By TCAP
- PHSO complaint form prepared for Alan Strickland MP referral
- Supporting statement and core evidence bundle
- Employment Tribunal case 6019060/2024
- HMCTS complaint references 71737337, 77553129 and 77988379
- Miranda Charters and Employment Judge T.R. Smith correspondence dated 10 March 2026
- HMCTS and Ministry of Justice correspondence concerning complaint records
- Alan Strickland MP correspondence confirming the referral process