Draft joint inspection report on the Crown Court 2004
04 March 2008
The Ministry of Justice has released a draft report that was prepared in 2003/04 by three criminal justice inspectorates following a joint inspection of the Crown Court.
In 2003 HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, HM Magistrates' Courts Service Inspectorate and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary carried out a joint inspection of listing and case management in the Crown Court.
The report was drafted at a time when there was a considerable amount of work already in progress to reform the criminal court and has never been finalised or published. The work already underway included the Auld Review in 2001 and the Effective Trials Management Programme which, through the Courts Act 2003 (which established HM Courts Service and HM Inspectorate of Court Administration) led to the establishment of the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee and the Criminal Procedure Rules 2005.
There have been a number of reforms to listing and case management of criminal cases in the last few years, so the situation which the 2003 report was assessing has changed enormously:
- the Lord Chief Justice issued new guidance on listing of cases in the Crown Court in 2005
- the Criminal Procedure Rules were published in 2005
- the Criminal Case Management Framework was published in two parts in 2007 and 2008
- there have been legislative changes in the Courts Act 2003 and Constitutional Reform Act 2005 affecting this area
Although the report was not published at the time, and remains in draft format, a recent decision by the Information Commissioner has identified a genuine public interest in the disclosure of the report, and today (4 March 2008) we are responding to that interest.