A high-level conference on the future of the European Court of Human Rights is taking place in Brighton, England on April 18 to 20.

The conference aims to reach an agreement on a political declaration on a package of reforms of the Court between ministers of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe.

The Court has experienced a rapid increase in its workload, and now has a backlog of around 150,000 applications, of which 90 percent applications are not qualified for the Court under its rules, according to government statistics.

Further more, of the 10 percent admissible cases, up to half are repetitive cases about issues that have already been decided by the Court.

Prior to the conference, British Prime Minister David Cameron made a speech laying out proposals for further reform of the Court, with emphasis on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the Court, and improving member states' performance at implementing the European Convention on Human Rights and judgments of the Court.

A draft of Brighton Declaration is being discussed by member states of the Council of Europe, while consultations had been conducted with several non-governmental organizations, according to senior British government officials.

Speaking to Xinhua on Wednesday, the officials said the Brighton conference was expected to be "the end of the process" and "decision taking" moment for the reform, and hopefully with agreements of all 47 member states to amend the Convention.

However, they admitted that the goals were not easy to meet due to the "diversity in legal systems" and "wide variety of the member states," as well as "deep scepticism about the motives" of the reform by some countries.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France considers cases alleging breach of the rights and freedoms contained in the treaty of European Convention on Human Rights. All cases at the Court are against states.

The European Convention on Human Rights is a treaty under the auspices of the Council of Europe, which contains 47 member states with a population of some 800 million people.