The UK's court system has finished migrating 37 applications off 2,500 pieces of failing datacenter hardware—a five-year project that illustrates both the necessity and complexity of government legacy system transitions.
HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) completed the exit from datacenters in Park Royal and Swindon, where aging equipment had become so obsolete that finding replacement parts was "nearly impossible," according to Pete Harrison, program director for decommissioning and legacy risk mitigation. The hardware created single points of failure for essential court services.
The real test comes now. Some applications moved to cloud platforms—including a consolidated jury management tool called Juror Digital and a new Crown Court digital recording system. Others landed in "a specially created temporary hosting facility" until they can be replaced or retired. That's the expensive middle ground most government migrations hit: you've left the old datacenter but haven't finished modernizing.
The costs tell the story. In 2023, HMCTS awarded CGI a contract extension worth up to £60 million to keep around 35 "heritage applications" running. The Common Platform criminal case management system, meant to replace older tools like Libra Web and Court Store, suffered a 2021 rethink that wrote off £22.5 million. The National Audit Office wasn't impressed.
This migration aligns with broader UK government cloud momentum. The Ministry of Justice previously moved ten major systems to cloud, and January's Cybersecurity and Resilience Bill passage creates regulatory pressure for secure infrastructure modernization. But there's tension: the Open Rights Group warns against over-reliance on US hyperscalers for sensitive justice data, particularly as 2026 becomes what observers call "the most consequential year for UK data protection enforcement since GDPR."
Sir Brian Leveson's independent criminal courts review, published this week, cited legacy IT and poor interoperability among causes of system fragmentation. His recommendations include AI for summarizing disclosed material and transcription—adding another modernization layer to systems just reaching cloud.
Three things to watch: whether temporary hosting becomes permanent (it often does), whether the Common Platform stabilizes after its rocky start, and how courts balance cloud migration speed against data sovereignty concerns. HMCTS shipped the datacenter exit. The harder work—proving the new systems actually work better—starts now.