EXTENDED COURT SITTING HOURS PILOTS IN MAGISTRATES' COURTS
27 Jan 2003 03:45 PM
Good practice guidelines, developed as a result of the extended court
hours pilot schemes, were published today by Courts Minister Yvette
Cooper, as part of the evaluation report on three pilots which
concluded last year.
The three pilot schemes were set up to look at the impact of sitting
hours in Magistrates' Courts on delay, effectiveness and efficiency
of the courts. Lord Justice Auld's report recommended that there be a
'thorough examination of the need for and the costs/benefits of
extending court working hours'.
The good practice templates for extending court sitting hours and
improved inter-agency working are contained in the independent
evaluation report into the extended court hours pilot schemes
conducted in London and Manchester from May to September 2002. The
evaluation found that the pilots were not cost effective, largely due
to the low number of cases and the existing adequate capacity to
handle the majority of cases during normal hours. However, it
suggested that useful lessons could be learnt from the pilots in
addressing additional court capacity problems in the future. The good
practice templates are now available for local areas, where there are
capacity problems, to consider.
Courts Minister Yvette Cooper said:
'This pilot scheme was set up to examine whether extending court
hours proved a cost effective way to improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of the courts. After a recommendation from Lord Justice
Auld, the scheme tested the impact of particular extensions to
sitting hours on reducing delays, deterring local criminals,
improving access to justice and helping reassure local communities.
'In practice, the night courts proved prohibitively expensive
although the early morning sittings were more useful.
'PA Consulting has produced a full evaluation report. The report's
conclusion has been that whilst there has been some reduction in
delays and some qualitative improvements for victims and witnesses,
the extended court sitting hours piloted in magistrates' courts
proved to be prohibitively expensive and were not cost effective,
especially given the fact that there are only limited capacity
pressures facing the magistrates courts during normal sitting hours.
'The findings indicated that the early morning sittings did assist
the handling of cases and the earlier hearings of overnight remand
cases had a beneficial effect on those cases already listed for
hearing that day. In contrast there was less demand for the late
night trials option, where the relatively low volume of cases led to
disproportionate additional costs.
'PA Consulting concluded that there were insufficient benefits in
terms of increased throughput, reduced delay, improved attrition or
overall quality of justice to justify the higher costs of extending
court hours under current capacity conditions. However, they noted
that useful lessons could be learnt from the pilots in dealing with
increased pressures on court capacity due to increased workload,
which might arise in future from such initiatives as Street Crime,
and increased numbers of police officers.
'The guidelines will be circulated so that areas which need to expand
court capacity in the future can learn the lessons of these extended
court hours options.
'I am grateful to all the personnel in the criminal justice system
from police officers through to court staff, lawyers and the
judiciary for making these pilot schemes possible. As ever, it is the
dedication of these individuals that will ensure the criminal justice
system is able to respond to the needs of our society.'
The most positive parts of the pilots - the early morning sittings
(probably focusing on a 9:30am start) and the use of 'specialist
courts' in the late afternoon - will now be considered by all
Magistrates' Courts Committees (MCC). The lessons learnt are being
shared with the Crown Court where there is greater immediate pressure
in relation to caseload.
The pilots were held at two locations, Bow Street in London and
Manchester Magistrates' Court. Manchester MCC has decided, on the
basis of their experience, to extend their use of early morning
sessions at Trafford Magistrates' Court to include early morning
fines courts.
Glenys Stacey, Justices Chief Executive for Greater Manchester
Magistrates' Courts Committee area, said:
'Planning and running this pilot demonstrated once again how well the
agencies involved in the criminal justice system in Greater
Manchester work together, both to develop joint working arrangements
and also to overcome the practical difficulties that can arise on a
daily basis. Operating the pilot has demonstrated to all the agencies
involved that there are possibilities, from which there could be
advantages in arranging courts outside the normal 10am to 4pm weekday
work pattern.'
Ashley Truluck, Justices Chief Executive for Greater London
Magistrates' Courts Committee area, said:
'The night courts part of the project was always ambitious and that
was why it was sensible to run a limited pilot. The pilot showed some
benefits but they came at a considerable expense. However, uppermost
amongst the benefits were very significant gains in inter-agency
working from which we learnt much and the pilot ran very smoothly
thanks to the considerable efforts of all the professional court
users and other criminal justice organisations.'
Both Justices Chief Executives were keen to commend the positive work
done by all the agencies and particularly mentioned the dedication of
their own legal advisers, ushers and back office staff and the
judiciary; as well as other less prominent organisations such as
Youth Offending Teams, Drug Referral Units and Bail Hostels.
The final cost of the three pilot projects was £2.04million. The
results have shown the value of close working between different
criminal justice agencies which will be taken forward in the work to
be undertaken by the new local Criminal Justice Boards.
Notes for Editors
1. The full report is available on the LCD website on
http://www.lcd.gov.uk and a copy of Yvette Cooper's ministerial
statement is attached.
2. The pilot projects, run at Manchester City Magistrates' Court and
Bow Street Magistrates' Court, London, trialled the new early morning
and late night sittings. The scheme was designed to:
- respond to night arrests;
- reduce delays in the justice process; and
- better serve the needs of victims and witnesses in terms of
offering more convenient court times.
3. Manchester Magistrates' Court started on 14 May 2002 operating an
early morning courts covering Monday to Friday to handle remand cases
and help clear the 'overnighters'. These courts started sitting at
9.00am and all criminal justice personnel were committed to the hour
earlier start. Evening trials were listed for twice weekly evening
sessions from 4pm to 8pm on a Tuesday and Thursday in order to offer
more convenient times to victims and witnesses.
4. Starting from Friday 17 May, Bow Street Magistrates' Court
operated a late night session heard by a District Judge (Magistrates'
Courts) from 6pm to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. This was
designed to tackle some of the cases that build up over the weekend
and thus ease the Monday morning burden which can delay the day's
planned caseload.
5. The pilots ended on 28 September 2002.
ENDS
(Ministerial Statement follows)
MINISTERIAL STATEMENT - EXTENDED COURT SITTING HOURS PILOTS IN
MAGISTRATES' COURTS
The Government has received the independent report (by PA Consulting)
on the extended court sitting hours pilots that took place last year
in magistrates' courts in London and Manchester between May and
September. Ministers are very grateful for the hard and positive work
put in by all the staff involved in the pilots from across the CJS
agencies, as well as the judiciary, both magistrates and District
Judges.
Lord Justice Auld recommended in his Review of the Criminal Courts
that there be a "thorough examination of the need for and the
costs/benefits of extending court working hours". The sitting hours
conventionally used in magistrates' courts have remained essentially
unchanged and set on a traditional basis for many years. The
Government, therefore, decided to pilot alternative working hours in
magistrates' courts in order to test possible improvements on the
courts' efficiency and effectiveness in the interests of the whole
Criminal Justice System.
Three distinct pilots were established with the local criminal
justice agencies to test out variations of extended court sitting
hours.
The three aspects of extended hours that were tested specifically
were:
In London Bow Street magistrates' court: the extended hours courts
ran on Friday and Saturday night from 6pm to midnight to deal with
first appearances of defendants charged in Westminster earlier in the
day.
In Manchester City magistrates' court two schemes ran:
- an early morning remand court starting at 9am rather than the
normal 10am, in three courts daily from Monday to Friday. These
courts heard first appearances of adult defendants arrested and held
in police custody the previous night; and
- an evening trial court ran from 4pm to 8pm on Tuesday and Thursday
evenings. This court heard adult trial cases for offences where there
was no likelihood of custody
The five main offence types heard in London were theft, failure to
surrender, begging drunk and disorderly and possession of drugs.
While in Manchester in the early remand courts the five main offence
types were theft, breach of the peace, driving without insurance,
failure to surrender, and breach of bail. In the Manchester evening
court, the large majority of cases were motoring offences.
During the pilots, 368 defendants appeared in Bow Street magistrates'
court London, 534 in Manchester magistrates' court in the early
morning courts and 88 in the evening trial court. It is worth noting
that all defendants appearing before the courts had to be 'fit to be
charged' and not under the 'influence' or otherwise incapable.
PA Consulting has produced a full evaluation report. The report's
conclusion has been that whilst there has been some reduction in
delays and some qualitative improvements for victims and witnesses,
the extended court sitting hours piloted in magistrates' courts
proved to be prohibitively expensive and were not cost effective
especially given the fact that there are only limited capacity
pressures facing the magistrates courts during normal sitting hours
The findings indicated that the early morning sittings did assist the
handling of cases and the earlier hearings of overnight remand cases
had a beneficial effect on those cases already listed for hearing
that day. In contrast there was less demand for the late night trials
option, where the relatively low volume of cases led to
disproportionate additional costs.
PA Consulting concluded that there were insufficient benefits in
terms of increased throughput, reduced delay, improved attrition or
overall quality of justice to justify the higher costs of extending
court hours under current capacity conditions. However, they noted
that useful lessons could be learnt from the pilots in dealing with
increased pressures on court capacity due to increased workloads
which might arise in the future, from such initiatives as Street
Crime, increased numbers of police officers.
The cost of the pilots reflected the fact that most agencies in the
criminal justice system currently have staff terms and conditions and
working arrangements based on a 'normal' working day, except the
police and prisons. Extending court business into the evening or
weekends is more expensive due to the need to recompense staff for
working unsociable hours and the additional costs of providing more
staff to cover evening courts. The high fixed costs of secure
transport and custody of prisoners also contributed significantly to
the costs of the pilots.
Preliminary costings for the three pilots were in the order of £5.4m.
In fact, partly as a result of reducing the length of the pilots to
four months without prejudicing their evaluation, the final total
cost was £2.04m, including national project costs. The additional
direct cost of handling each defendant was: £3,257 in London; £589
for Manchester morning courts and £1,322 for Manchester evening
trials. In particular, the relatively low number of cases in London
affected that particular pilot's value for money, especially as this
cost does not include the use of prisons for remanded defendants but
the temporary, and certainly not long-term alternative, of police
cells. The Manchester morning courts were the least costly due to the
higher volumes involved, but the pilots identified important lessons
about the actual mechanics of how such courts should be run.
The inter-agency pilots have greatly assisted the working
relationships in two of the country's largest metropolitan areas and
a significant number of cases have been dealt with, despite the
unpredictable nature of the number of cases that would actually occur
during the pilots. Early operational problems, such as prisoner
delivery were largely resolved quickly.
This exercise has meant that the Government has learnt valuable
lessons which can be shared with all the local criminal justice
agencies throughout the country and improvements made to existing
arrangements, as well as establishing the ground-work for any future
changes. The consultants were also charged to consider other
alternatives and these have been taken into account in the Report and
its recommendations. The Report's findings will be circulated to
Criminal Justice Boards, Magistrates' Courts Committees and Crown
Courts so that where capacity problems arise any new arrangements
being considered can take into account the lessons learnt from this
pilot exercise. Manchester Magistrates' Courts Committee has decided
on the basis of the experience of the pilot to extend the use of
early morning sessions at Trafford Magistrates' Court to include
early morning fines courts. The Report's recommendations have been
agreed, which are being implemented, are set out below:
- the London and Manchester protocols have been put into 'good
practice' templates (which have been included in the Appendices to
the Report);
- the Report is being issued out to all the agencies involved (so
that should specific pressure require extended magistrates' court
hours in any particular location or in order to respond to
initiatives, advantage can be taken of the work done so far);
- the lessons learnt are being shared with the Crown Court where
there is greater immediate pressure in relation to caseload; and
- the most practical elements of the pilots, the early morning
sittings (probably focusing on a 9:30 start) and the use of
'specialist courts' in the late afternoon, will be actively
considered by all Magistrates' Courts Committees (MCCs) - where the
need and practical arrangements will be a matter for each MCC to
decided upon in conjunction with their CJS colleagues under the
umbrella of the new local Criminal Justice Boards.
The Government will continue to explore ways to improve and update
the working practices of the courts.
Lord Chancellor's Department Press Notice
Selborne House,
54 Victoria Street,
London SW1E 6QW
www.lcd.gov.uk