Summary Case Management -Sheriff Court Update

Message Received from Sheriff Principal Anwar re Summary Case Management -

---

I write to advise you of changes to the case management hearing/continued without plea courts. These measures are designed to address “churn”. The number of continued hearings is resulting in overloaded courts which both affects the time available for case management discussions and leads to delays in these courts for all those involved.

Changes to CMH/CWP courts & In-court surgery

With effect from 7 April:

• Mainstream (ie non-domestic abuse) CMH courts will call in the morning and domestic abuse CMH courts will call in the afternoon.

• CMH mainstream courts will commence at 10.30 am. The depute will conduct an “in court surgery” designed to deal with missing letters of engagement, missing disclosure items and plea discussions from 9.30 am to 10.30 am. That should lead to more efficient use of the court, improved compliance with the practice note and allow scope for plea discussions.

• CMH domestic courts will commence at 2.15 pm. The depute will conduct an “in court surgery” between 1.45 pm and 2.15 pm.

• Sheriffs will be provided with summaries of evidence in advance in respect of all cases calling in the CMH courts and will thus be in a position to discuss the details with parties meaningfully.

It is important that courts commence punctually at 10.30 am and 2.15 pm, otherwise we will all experience delays in getting through the business.

Please do encourage your members to take advantage of the in-court surgeries. I am pleased to see the Crown allocate resources to the in-court surgery. If there is a lack of engagement by defence agents, it is inevitable that the Crown may re-allocate resources.

Letters of Engagement

I understand that with effect from 1 April, defence agents will be able to confirm that they are “engaged” on DAS (Defence Agent Service). Paper copy letters of engagement/emails advising COPFS that agents are engaged will no longer be necessary. I have been advised by the Crown that as soon as an agent is marked as being “engaged” on DAS, all material which has been uploaded can be made available immediately.

Notional Trial Diets – outstanding reports

Cases in which psychiatric reports or forensic reports require to be disclosed and are not available will have notional trial diets fixed for longer periods, rather than calling repeatedly every 3 weeks as a CMH. They will continue to call in the CMH court and not the trial courts. This should reduce the number of unproductive hearings in these cases.

---

Any feedback on the changes can be made by e-mail to the library, to enable the Dean to then raise any relevant issues arising from the changes with the SP.