The view from your bench
Magistrate visits Gloucestershire
When people think of Gloucestershire, they usually have an image of idyllic Cotswold scenery and pretty, sleepy villages. This might be true of life here in general but it certainly is not true of the Gloucestershire magistracy, who have always prided themselves in being very much in the vanguard of adopting new ideas and procedures.
The county has a population of a little over 500,000, of whom the vast majority are of white Caucasian origin. Our largest immigrant sector is from eastern Europe, probably reflecting the agricultural nature of work available, and that our largest employment sectors are service and tourism. Our second largest immigrant population is of Indian extraction, most of whom live in the centre of Gloucester.
On the whole, crime statistics reflect national trends but at generally lower numbers. However, when looked at in more detail, violent crime, drug offences and theft in both Gloucester City and Cheltenham are higher than the national average. Why this is so is not explained, especially with comparatively low unemployment but, like many other inner-city areas, we have crime hot-spots and regular clientele.
Although there are five courthouses in Gloucestershire (Gloucester, Cheltenham, Stroud, Cirencester and Coleford) we are unusual, if not unique, in having a county-wide bench structure. This began with the unification of administration under one Chief Justices’ Clerk in 2001. The courthouse-based youth panels then consolidated county-wide, followed swiftly by the family, enforcement and appeals panels and the BTDC.
It was the impending dissolution of the Magistrates’ Courts Committee (MCC) that finally focused our minds on total amalgamation in 2004. Although JPs seemed very comfortable with their five courthouse groupings and internal rotas, we were concerned that without the MCC our magistrates’ voice would not be heard. Additionally, with five bench chairmen our new Area Director might have found it difficult to get a consensus view. This, coupled with the positive experience of the unified panels, convinced us to make the leap. We now have a bench of 239 JPs and plan to increase by 29 this year. Our MA membership is around 85%.
In terms of recruitment, we do have difficulty, possibly because of the growing reluctance of employers to release people and the travelling distances required. Given that the county stretches from north of Tewkesbury almost to Bath in the south and over to the Welsh border, travel times are considerable. We also have a demographic time bomb in that one third of the bench has been appointed within the past three years and this will feed through to chairmanship training and balancing of benches between youth and experience.
We have a very active MIC group, thanks to Tony Howarth who was the architect of our Mock Trials Competitions. In recognition of his hard work over the years, he and his team in Stroud received a special award from the MA. This year over 70 primary schools competed, and we are hoping to attract 100 next year, anticipating a national winner in the not too distant future.
We have always prided ourselves in being innovative in Gloucestershire and have embraced new ideas with enthusiasm. We were one of the first counties to adopt the MNTI training scheme and moved very quickly onto MNTI II. We were so pleased with the success of CJSSS locally that we decided to operate it in the youth court off our own bat and were congratulated by Lord Justice Leveson at the South West seminar in April. We were also one of the pilot benches for the new fine enforcement regime. Subsequently, we appointed fines officers who have innovative methods of enforcement such as Christmas and Easter cards to defaulters, notifying them of the penalties if they do not pay – our fine enforcement record is now in excess of 100% of fines issued on the day. We also have excellent relations with the higher courts within family proceedings work and that workload has increased 97.7% over the past three years, mainly due to private law work being transferred from the County Court.
Despite all of the above, we cannot pretend that everything is rosy. We do have a recruitment problem and there has been considerable concern about the mothballing of two of our outlying courthouses in a county with infrequent public transport links. We have reputedly some of the worst estate in the country but are hoping to be granted funds for a new combined Crown and magistrates’ courthouse for Gloucester City in the near future. However, despite this, we are a forward-looking group and always relish any new challenges that come our way.