Staff in magistrates' courts in the Gateshead area are working in poor, cramped conditions, according to a Magistrates' Courts Service Inspectorate report. It warns that spending priorities need to be identified in a bid to improve the facilities offered to staff, professional users and the public. But the inspectors who monitored the court's performance late last year added that staff needed to reduce lengthy waiting times for all court users and improve the poor performance on fines collection.
Let's level the playing field
Northern Ireland (population 1.5 million) is similar to a very large, rural English county with one medium-sized centre (Belfast, population 350,000). And the problems facing its legal practitioners are similar to those faced by their provincial English counterparts with much premium legal work going to London and a proliferation of small high street firms (75 […]