Ms Angela Denning:

We work closely with the Office of Public Works on all courthouse design. In relation to universal design, one of the first groups I met when I was appointed CEO of the Courts Service was an international group comprising experts worldwide who only work on courthouse design. We are leveraging its knowledge for the design of Hammond Lane. We are doing extensive user consultation on Hammond Lane and that has thrown up certain issues. We have never built a dedicated family court building before. Apart from the Criminal Courts of Justice building, which was purely for criminal cases, all of our previous court buildings had to be multifunctional. It is about ensuring the building we build meets the needs of the people who will use it.

Some of the design features people will see in Hammond Lane will be different from those in a traditional courthouse. For family law cases, we are told by practitioners that fewer consultation rooms are needed, so there will be more consultation space in order that people can have a quiet chat and take instructions quickly without necessarily going into consultation rooms. There will also be some breakout spaces - family law cases are very emotive - where people can go outside and get a break. Those types of features, which one would not necessarily see in another courthouse, are being looked at.

We do not have universal design people on our staff. As I said, however, we will look for an expert in plain English for our website. We consult the National Disability Authority when we do signage and so on in buildings in order to assist people. We use the OPW.