Authors:LAG
Created:2017-09-01
Last updated:2023-09-18
Extended court opening hours pilot announcement meets criticism
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Administrator
Full details of the flexible operating hours (FOH) pilots for the courts were announced by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) at the end of July. The pilots are due to commence this month or next and will run for six months. The plans have been greatly criticised by some practitioners.
Six pilots are being run with different opening times, three at London courts (Blackfriars Crown Court, Brentford County Court and Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court) and three in other cities (Manchester Civil Justice Centre, Newcastle Crown Court and Sheffield Magistrates’ Court). The MoJ is running a tender exercise for a contractor to complete an evaluation of the pilots. The tender document says that the work will require the successful bidder to carry out a ‘rigorous analysis’ of the ‘processes, outcomes, and scale of costs associated with FOH’.
Details of the pilots were announced in a blog post on HM Courts and Tribunals Service’s website. The comments on the blog reflected the widespread concerns that have been raised by practitioners. A disabled barrister from Manchester who has three children said that the increased sitting hours would have a ‘massively disproportionate effect on those of us with caring responsibilities’. A representative from a practitioner group told Legal Action that the MoJ ‘had not thought through the practicalities of this’ and should have consulted them before launching the pilot.
In an open letter, Fulford LJ, the judge in charge of reform, responded to some of the criticisms. He said that they were approaching the project ‘with an entirely open mind’ and that there were no plans ‘for a national roll out’, but that extended opening hours in some courts and tribunals might increase access to justice.
On 11 August, in a reply to Fulford LJ’s letter, the president of the Law Society, Joe Egan, wrote that ‘the financial and equalities impacts … of the proposed pilot hours could be significant’. Egan pointed out that, unlike other staff who work in the courts system, with the possible exception of those working in very large criminal firms, most solicitors do not work in shift patterns that can be adapted to the court’s extended hours.
Egan, who took over the top job at the Law Society in July, runs his own firm in Bolton, Greater Manchester. The practice undertakes legal aid work. In his letter to Fulford LJ, he pointed out that legal aid firms are currently working on ‘very slim or zero profit margins’ and that the Law Society is ‘concerned that anything which worsens the position still further could lead to more firms exiting the market either by choice or through insolvency’.