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HMCTS API Marketplace

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Onboarding guide

How to get started with the HMCTS API Marketplace — for consumers, producers and non-technical teams.

Contents

  1. What is the API Marketplace?
  2. Who is this guide for?
  3. Consumer onboarding
  4. Producer onboarding
  5. Before you start
  6. Getting help

This guide is written for a non-technical audience. It explains what the API Marketplace is, who it is for, and what your organisation needs to do before you can start using or publishing APIs.

1. What is the HMCTS API Marketplace?

The HMCTS API Marketplace is a central catalogue of data APIs from across His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. Think of it as a library for data — teams can browse, understand, and request access to data feeds that power justice services.

The marketplace does not build or host the APIs itself. It makes them discoverable, documented, and accessible in one place — with governance controls to ensure only the right people can access the right data.

2. Who is this guide for?

API consumers

Teams who need to use an existing HMCTS API to build a service or product. Browse APIs.

API producers

Teams that own and build HMCTS APIs and want them discoverable and usable by others. Publish an API or read the standards.

3. Consumer onboarding, step by step

If your team needs to access data from an HMCTS API, follow these steps.

Step 1: Confirm your use case

Find the API you need in the catalogue and confirm your use case is within scope. Read the plain-English description to understand what data it returns. Do not request access speculatively.

Step 2: Check your organisation’s eligibility

Your organisation must be part of HMCTS Digital and Technology Solutions, a justice sector partner, or an approved third party. You need a valid work email address to proceed.

Step 3: Arrange a Data Sharing Agreement

Required for personal data APIs

For APIs that return personal data, your organisation must have a DPA or DSA in place before access is granted. Check with your legal or data protection team before submitting.

Step 4: Submit your access request

Sign in to your developer account, or create one if you do not have one yet.

Once signed in, submit an access request describing your use case, expected call volume and environment, and complete the declarations.

Step 5: Data Access Panel and API owner review

Your request is sent to the HMCTS Data Access Panel for review and approval. This is currently an offline process, so look out for emails requesting clarification, or confirming approval or rejection.

Once the Data Access Panel has approved your request, the API owner reviews it and issues you with credentials for the relevant environments.

Step 6: Integrate and go live

Use your issued credentials to integrate in the sandbox environment first. Never test against production. Once integration is confirmed, request production access.

4. Producer onboarding, step by step

If your team owns an HMCTS API and wants it listed on the marketplace, follow these steps.

Warning Only external APIs may be listed. Internal or developer-only APIs are not eligible for the marketplace.

Step 1: Check your API meets the producer standards

Your API must have a valid OpenAPI 3.x specification hosted at the standard path in a public GitHub repository under the HMCTS organisation. It must pass Spectral linting with no errors. Read the producer standards.

Step 2: Set up the GitHub Actions workflow

Add the standard publish-api-docs.yml workflow to your repository. This triggers the shared amp-catalog workflow and stamps the version from your GitHub release tag automatically.

Step 3: Confirm documentation is publicly accessible

Verify your Swagger UI documentation site is live at https://hmcts.github.io/<repo-name>/ before submitting.

Step 4: Submit via the publish an API form

Sign in to your developer account, or create one if you do not have one yet.

Once signed in, provide your API name, GitHub repository, domain, data classification and a plain-English description for consumers. Complete the declaration and submit the Publish an API form for review.

Step 5: Marketplace team review

The marketplace team reviews your submission. Once approved, your API appears in the catalogue and stays in sync with your OpenAPI specification.

Step 6: Manage incoming access requests

Once live, consumers can submit access requests. You are responsible for reviewing them, notifying consumers of breaking changes, and keeping your specification up to date.

5. Before you start, what you will need

A valid work email address

You must use an HMCTS, justice sector, or approved partner email address to submit any form on the marketplace.

A Data Sharing Agreement — consumers

For APIs containing personal data, your organisation’s legal team must confirm a DPA or DSA is in place before submitting an access request.

An OpenAPI 3.x specification — producers

Your API must have a valid OpenAPI specification hosted at the standard path in a public GitHub repository under the HMCTS organisation.

OAuth 2.0 capability — consumers

All HMCTS APIs use OAuth 2.0 with JWT bearer tokens. Your system must support this before access is granted.

Data classification confirmed

Both consumers and producers must understand and declare the data classification of the API — Official or Official-Sensitive.

6. Getting help