The Court Service is an executive agency of LCD. It runs the civil and criminal courts in England and Wales apart from the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords and the magistrates' courts. It also administers those tribunals that fall under the Lord Chancellor's responsibility, including the Immigration Appellate Authority (see Section 1.VI), the Office of the Social Security and Child Support Commissioners and the VAT and Duties Tribunals. The Judicial Committee of House of Lords is run by a separate office. Magistrates' courts are run by 42 local Magistrates' Courts Committees. These are mainly funded by the Lord Chancellor but also partly by local government. They are not part of LCD but the Lord Chancellor has certain supervisory and default powers that relate to them.
We aim to provide a fair, swift and effective system of criminal justice which helps reduce crime and the fear of crime.
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The law in England and Wales is divided into criminal law and civil law. Criminal law mostly involves the rules laid down by the state for citizens, while civil law governs the relationships and transactions between citizens. Administrative law is a special sort of civil law that mainly concerns the interactions of citizens with the state, especially where the state is making decisions affecting individual citizens. Administrative law cases are mostly heard in tribunals specific to the subject, while civil and criminal cases are heard in the main court system.
Most minor criminal cases, called summary offences, are heard in local magistrates' courts either by a panel of lay magistrates assisted by a legally-trained clerk, or by a legally-trained district judge sitting alone. Magistrates' courts also house family proceedings courts and the youth courts. The most serious offences, called indictable-only offences, are passed on by the magistrates' courts to the Crown Court to be heard, usually by a judge and jury. Some cases fall in between, called either-way cases, and may be heard in either court. Only Crown Court judges have the power to pass sentences above a certain level of severity, and so some cases may be transferred from magistrates' courts for sentencing once a verdict has been reached. There are 78 Crown Court centres throughout England and Wales.
The majority of civil actions are heard in the 218 county courts, which also handle some family and bankruptcy hearings. The manner in which each case is dealt with depends on the value of the claim, so that the time and cost spend on the case is appropriate to its value.
The High Court sits at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as well as at some major court centres around the country. The work is handled by three divisions, depending on its subject:
The Divisional Court of the High Court sits in the Family and Chancery Divisions, and hears appeals from the magistrates' courts and county courts. The Administrative Court in the Queen's Bench Division deals with a variety of judicial review matters.
The Court of Appeal also sits at the Royal Courts of Justice. The Criminal Division hears appeals from Crown Court cases, while the Civil Division receives appeals from the High Court, tribunals and, in certain cases, county courts.
For most legal cases in England and Wales, the House of Lords is the final point of appeal, although a small number of cases each year may be referred to the European Court of Justice, which has jurisdiction on matters of European Community law. All appeals to the House of Lords are about the meaning of the law, rather than the evidence in a case. The Law Lords also hear appeals from cases in Scotland and Northern Ireland; in addition, they sit as the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to hear appeals from those Commonwealth countries whose legal systems are still linked to the UK.
The effective administration of courts and tribunals lies at the heart of delivering justice, as represented in our strategic objective.
Objective
To provide a fair, swift and effective system of justice which promotes confidence in the rule of law; helps reduce crime, the fear of crime, and the economic consequences of crime; and gives value for money (SO1).
Our PSA targets represent our commitment to support all parties during their time in court, including victims, witnesses, jurors and defendants. We are also working to increase the overall speed and efficiency of the justice system and the public's confidence in it.
Going to court can be a difficult and stressful experience for all concerned. We work hard to give as much support and information as we can to all participants in the legal process, particularly the jurors, victims, witnesses and defendants.
Target
To secure a minimum five percentage point improvement in the level of satisfaction of users of the justice system by 2004, including that of victims and witnesses with their treatment in the criminal justice system (PSA1).
For the criminal courts, this target is supported by three SDA targets, in which we focus on our service to jurors, witnesses (including victims) and defendants.
Jury service is a long-standing and important feature of the Criminal Justice System and an important public duty. Anyone aged 18-70 can be summoned to serve on a jury, with the exception of a few exempted groups.
In January 2000, a survey of jurors showed that 95 per cent were satisfied or very satisfied with the treatment they had received at court, 42 per cent being very satisfied. In keeping with this excellent service record, we set ourselves a high target.
Target
To maintain at 95 per cent the proportion of jurors who are satisfied or very satisfied with their treatment in the criminal justice system, while increasing the number who are very satisfied by 5 per cent by March 2002 and by 10 per cent by March 2004 (SDA1).
A repeat of the same survey in early 2002 showed that 95.1 per cent of jurors were still satisfied or very satisfied with their overall treatment while serving. However, the number of those very satisfied had fallen to 37.5 per cent. Among the survey reponses, we were very pleased that 45 per cent of jurors were very satisfied with the information provided by the Court Service about jury service, and over 58 per cent were very satisfied with the service they received at court.
To improve people's experience of jury service still further, we have introduced two new initiatives: the Jury Summoning Bureau and virtual tours of the Crown Court. The Jury Summoning Bureau was launched in 2000 and is now the first port of call for all potential jurors needing information or seeking to defer or be excused from service. We hope that jurors will soon be able to correspond with the Bureau and reply to summonses on the Internet. Potential jurors will soon be able to take a virtual tour of the Crown Court - we launched a pilot in December 2001 on Southwark Crown Court's website. We plan to roll out similar systems to the other court centres.
The justice system, particularly in criminal cases, relies on people's willingness to give evidence in court. Witnesses are heard and cross-examined to establish the true facts of a case and ensure that justice is done. Giving evidence is a difficult task for many people and we aim to ease the process as much as we can, particularly for victims in criminal cases.
It disrupts people's lives to take time to appear in court. Witnesses should be inconvenienced as little as possible by having to wait or attend in court unnecessarily. We measure unnecessary attendance as the percentage of people who are called to court but do not give evidence.
Target
To improve the service for witnesses by reducing the average waiting time in the magistrates' courts to one hour or less by March 2002 and reducing the unnecessary attendance of witnesses in the magistrates' courts by 10 per cent over the period 2001-04 (SDA2).
In November 2001, the average waiting time in magistrates' courts stood at 1 hour 24 minutes, six minutes less than in November 1997 when we first recorded this information. Unnecessary attendance has also started to fall and we have seen a drop of 3 per cent to 50 per cent in the last 12 months.
We have introduced a new monitoring scheme to help magistrates' courts identify the reasons for trials 'cracking' or being 'ineffective'. Launched in January 2001, the scheme will start full data collection in April 2002, from when it will help Magistrates' Courts Committees to identify and monitor problems in the Criminal Justice System.
'Cracking' occurs when, at the start of the case hearing, the defendant offers acceptable pleas, or the prosecution offers no evidence. A trial is 'ineffective' when, on the trial date, the expected progress is not made; this could be due to action or inaction by the prosecution, the defence or the courts, and it results in the trial needing to be listed for a further hearing.
The magistrates' courts have been working closely with Victim Support on extending its Crown Court Witness Service into the magistrates' courts. Victim Support is on course to meet our target of providing witness services in all magistrates' courts by the end of March 2002. In December 2001, over 50 per cent of magistrates' courts had a witness service in place. We have worked closely with the Home Office and Victim Support to set up the necessary arrangements and have agreed a Service Model setting out the service that Witness Services must provide.
Over the last two years, the Court Service has almost doubled the number of TV link systems in the courts: 76 of the 78 Crown Court centres now have the system available. These systems allow witnesses, particularly those who are vulnerable or who have been intimidated, to give their evidence from outside the courtroom. In some places, witnesses can give evidence at locations away from the court.
All new magistrates' court buildings provide separate waiting facilities for witnesses. We are continuing to fund local authorities to help them meet the costs of creating and improving facilities for witnesses attending magistrates' courts.
A defendant is someone who has been arrested, charged or summonsed for any criminal offence, but whose case has not yet finished in conviction, acquittal or some other outcome. A defendant is innocent unless they are proved beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty - this is one of the most important principles of English law.
At the Lord Chancellor's Department, we have a unique role in protecting the rights of defendants in the Criminal Justice System (CJS). Our objective is to ensure that all defendants are given proper legal advice and support in order to present their case and receive a fair trial. To achieve this objective, we have agreed a 'basket' of measures within SDA4 which we will complete by 2002. These measures are:
Of these four targets, we have met the first three. We were still collecting data for the duty solicitors measure in the last quarter of 2001-02, so this will not be available for targeting purposes until the first quarter of 2002-03. We are collecting and monitoring data in other areas of the CJS to find suitable new measures which we will add to the basket. The outcome of the current Allnut review of data collection within the CJS should give us much more data on which to base our targets for development.
Reducing delay in the Criminal Justice System has been a priority for the Government since its election in 1997. The Labour Government's 1997 manifesto included a specific pledge to halve the time it takes to deal with persistent young offenders. Already well on the way to meeting that pledge, the Government has decided that other areas of the CJS would benefit from having timeliness targets applied to them.
Target
To reduce by 2004 the time from arrest to sentence or other disposal for all defendants by:
We are pleased to report that the last of these three targets was met in September 2001 and the level has been maintained since. We are developing precise targets for the first two categories.
Meanwhile, other work to reduce delay has continued. The bulk of the so-called 'Narey' measures in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 were implemented in November 1999 and had an immediate and substantial impact. These measures significantly shorten the period between the arrest of a defendant and their first court appearance: defendants now normally appear in court at the next available sitting.
We implemented a further reform in January 2001, to send indictable-only cases straight to the Crown Court after the first appearance in the magistrates' court. Defendants in custody should now appear before the Crown Court within eight working days of their first appearance in the magistrates' court; those on bail must appear within 28 days of their papers being received by the Crown Court. In some instances, if the defendant pleads guilty and the judge proceeds to sentence at the first hearing, the case can be dealt with within a week of the defendant being charged. In most cases, this procedure allows Crown Court judges to take a robust case management role from the start, by setting clear timetables for both sides to prepare their case.
We have not yet fully evaluated the reform, but the early indications are that it has reduced waiting times in the more serious cases.
'Chris' (not his real name) was a 29-year old heroin addict. He robbed a garage at knifepoint on two occasions six days apart. On the second occasion he was caught. He was arrested on a Tuesday and appeared before magistrates on the Wednesday, when he was sent to the Crown Court for trial. He appeared before the Crown Court on Thursday of the following week, where he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 6½ years' imprisonment - just nine days after his arrest.
Before the Narey measures came into effect, his case would have taken between four and six months to reach the Crown Court. During this time he could have been granted bail and may have committed further offences. With our reforms, we hope to handle many more cases as swiftly as that of Chris.
"Public confidence is not so much an aim of a good criminal justice system, but a consequence of it. The aim should be for those responsible to inform themselves in a more thorough and measured way than they do now of what changes are required and, in making them, to adequately explain them to the public." (Sir Robin Auld, Review of the Criminal Courts, paragraph 32)
The justice system must be run well. It is equally important that the public have confidence in it.
Target
To improve the level of public confidence in the Criminal Justice System by 2004, including improving that of ethnic minority communities (PSA3).
As Sir Robin Auld noted in his report on the Criminal Justice System, raising public confidence is not just a question of "selling the product". We believe that public confidence will increase as a result of the improvements we are making to the justice system. We are committed to communicating with a wide audience to explain our improvements and the benefits they will bring.
The practice by some of the media of paying witnesses in criminal trials for their stories has caused controversy and doubt in some high profile cases, most recently those of Rosemary West and Gary Glitter. This not only risks a miscarriage of justice: the publicity can reduce public confidence in the Criminal Justice System as a whole. Our consultation paper in February 2002 proposed making it illegal to pay witnesses in criminal trials to publish their stories.
We are making more information available to the public to demystify the process of justice. We have developed virtual walkthroughs of the court process for witnesses, victims and jurors, and produced packages for use in education. We also collaborated with Radio Shropshire on a radio programme about the justice system.
It is very difficult to set targets for this area of work. However, over the next two years we shall be using data from the British Crime Survey to assess the level of confidence held by people from all sections of society in different aspects of the Criminal Justice System.
Attrition means working to ensure that a greater number of offenders are brought to justice. We share this target with the Home Office and the Law Officers' Departments:
Target
To increase the number and proportion of recorded crimes for which an offender is brought to justice (PSA4).
Our contribution to this target is through our role in promoting the swift and efficient disposal of cases brought into the court system. In particular, our work on reducing delay (see Section 1.II) and increasing courtroom utilisation in the Crown Court (see below) supports this aim. In addition, our initiatives to improve the treatment of victims and witnesses in the Criminal Justice System (see Section 1.I [Witnesses]) will increase their willingness to continue with cases.
The first priority of the court system is to deliver justice, but justice must also be delivered efficiently. To do this, and to use our resources effectively, we are tackling problems such as courtroom over-capacity and running costs.
The capacity of the court system is the total number of hours during which cases can be heard in courtrooms. Over-capacity is the percentage of this available time that is not used.
Target
To reduce courtroom over-capacity by 10 per cent by March 2002 (SDA46).
We are using court capacity more effectively to reduce surplus. In 2000, courtroom over-capacity stood at 43 per cent. Since then, between April and September 2001, it has fallen to 38.5 per cent, a reduction by 10.5 per cent. This is despite the fact that our standard measure of the capacity of each courtroom has been increased from 1,000 to 1,240 hours per year. Other courts and tribunals have used some of the surplus hours and we have increased the joint usage of courtrooms by the Crown Court, county courts and magistrates' courts.
We are also tackling the problem of some urban areas having too many separate court locations.
Target
To optimise the use of court estate by: reducing the number of separate locations in all provincial conurbations and reducing by five per cent the level of over-provision/excess space in existing court centres by using the Internal Benchmarking System (SDA48).
By combining different court functions in one location, we can save on running costs and generate income by selling or leasing vacant accommodation. We have already achieved our initial target and continue to seek further opportunities with all new schemes. There is now minimal vacant space in our estate.
Target
To achieve an average annual increase of three per cent in Crown courtroom utilisation in the period 2001-04 (SDA47).
Our target means achieving 71.9 per cent courtroom utilisation by 31 March 2004. Our milestone was to reach 67.8 per cent by 31 March 2002. We have already exceeded that level. Between April and September 2001, usage was already at 68.9 per cent, due to an increase in funding to dispose of criminal cases and our efforts to rationalise court estate. We expect to maintain this position up to and beyond 31 March 2002 and to achieve our second milestone of 69.8 per cent by 31 March 2003.
During 2001-02, the cost of one day's sitting in a Crown Court was estimated to be £709 per hour, not including legal assistance.
Target
To reduce by three per cent every year in real terms the unit cost of an operational courtroom hour in the Crown Court (SDA51).
This year's estimate suggests that we have already achieved a reduction of 2.2 per cent and the final outcome might well be greater. The Crown Court is sitting 7,000 extra days this year. This increases efficiency, as we are making better use of our courtroom capacity - even although the costs of staff and court reporting also increase correspondingly.
Achieving value for money includes improving the service as well as saving money.
We have a policy of publishing comparative performance tables on key targets for magistrates' courts. We also encourage better performance through a new system for distributing funding (SDA43). Magistrates' Courts Committees can use the information on performance to identify improvements for their own efficiency and customer services.
Warrants are issued by magistrates' courts when a person who has received a summons fails to attend. In many cases, the summons is for a failure to comply with a community sentence, for which the offender will often be fined. By enforcing the warrants, we increase the effectiveness of the Criminal Justice System and also collect revenue from fines that would otherwise be lost.
Enforcement of warrants used to be a police responsibility. However, to give enforcement a higher profile, the responsibility for warrant execution was transferred to Magistrates' Courts Committees in April 2001 (SDA52). The transfer was completed on time and sucessfully. We expected performance in the collection of fines to slip initially, but this has not been the case.
We are now embarking on a programme of measures to improve performance, based on evidence from research funded by the Crime Reduction Programme. One exercise in particular, an information-sharing arrangement with the Department of Work and Pensions, proved very successful. By helping the courts to trace defaulters and collect fines that would otherwise have been written off, the arrangement paid for itself within six months.
Asylum appeal cases are handled by the Immigration Appellate Authority (IAA). There are two stages to the appeal process. At the first stage, a single legally-qualified adjudicator hears the case and considers the evidence from the appellant and the Secretary of State of the Home Office and comes to a decision. When this decision is delivered, either party can then seek leave to appeal to the Immigration Appeal Tribunal. If leave to appeal is granted, the three-member panel considers the grounds of the appeal against the adjudicator's decision.
Target
In terms of asylum, to increase the proportion of appeals completed within four months to 65 per cent from 2002-03 (SDA28).
Of the cases received between 1 April and 30 June 2001, 44.8 per cent went through both tiers of the Immigration Appellate Authority (IAA) within 17 weeks. We aim, from 2002-03, to raise this to 65 per cent.
The IAA will increase its processing capacity from 4,000 asylum cases per month to 6,000 from November 2002. This expansion involves providing 50 additional rooms for hearings, in the region of 100 additional full-time adjudicators and the necessary administrative staff, interpreters and legal representatives.
We are introducing initiatives to improve our performance. We are setting up dedicated listing offices in major hearing centres to manage cases directly and we are working to reduce unnecessary adjournments. A pilot scheme on judicial deployment is under way at Hatton Cross: adjudicators who sit in court on one day are then allocated the next day to write their determinations so that cases are decided as quickly as possible.
Target
To reduce in real terms the unit cost of an asylum appeal by an average of three per cent per year (SDA50).
We have reduced the costs of asylum appeal by clearing cases more quickly and reducing administration costs. The target cost for 2001-02, not including accommodation and overheads, is £1,025; current performance suggests that the actual cost will be well below this, in the range of £750 to £900.
On 14 December 1999, the Lord Chancellor appointed Sir Robin Auld, a senior Appeal Court Judge, to conduct an independent review of the criminal court system in England and Wales. On 8 October 2001, after exhaustive and far-reaching consultation, Sir Robin's Review of the Criminal Courts of England and Wales Report was published.
The Lord Chancellor described Sir Robin's work as "...a stimulating vision of what a modern criminal justice system should be." The report contains 328 recommendations covering every aspect of the organisation, practices and procedures of the criminal courts. Along with the recommendations for sentencing and police reform, the Government welcomed the report as a major contribution towards the achievement of a criminal justice system that is modern, effective and in touch with the needs of the community.
The Government sought the views of the public, political parties and people working in the Criminal Justice System to gain a broad consensus for enlightened and effective reform. This period for comment ended on 31 January 2002 and is being followed by a White Paper. In the meantime, the Lord Chancellor's Department, the Home Office and the Crown Prosecution Service are working together to prepare the ground for whatever work will be necessary to implement the agreed reforms.
In May 2000, the Government commissioned Sir Andrew Leggatt to conduct a wide-ranging review of the tribunals system, which is the backbone of the administrative justice system. There are some 80 different tribunals in England and Wales, administered by various government departments and local authorities. They deal with over a million cases each year, resolving disputes that affect almost every area of people's lives, including their income (tax and social security), their families and children's education (child support, special education needs, asylum and immigration) and their health (mental health).
Sir Andrew's report Tribunals for Users was published in August 2001 in conjunction with a consultation paper seeking views on the report's main recommendations. In its 2001 manifesto, the Government made a commitment to examine tribunal reform in light of the report. In parallel with the consultation exercise, the Lord Chancellor established the Tribunals for Users Programme. This examined the options for reforming tribunals and improving their services to users.
The consultation exercise ended in November 2001, and we finished our initial appraisal of the reform options in February 2002. We have now put forward our proposals for reform to Government ministers..