Courts and Tribunals Weekly Operational Update - Coronavirus: week commencing 8 June 2020
HM Courts and Tribunals Service sent this bulletin at 07-06-2020 06:00 PM BST
HMCTS weekly operational update: week commencing 8 June 2020
From Friday 24 April 2020 we are issuing weekly updates on our operational position and we’ll email our subscribers each Sunday evening with a reminder. On Monday mornings we’ll also publish a link to the weekly update on Twitter.
Next week’s update will be issued on Friday 12 June 2020.
We have many online court and tribunal services available to professional users and members of the public. These remove the need to contact us by phone, email or post.
We have comprehensively assessed risk to staff and users and are ensuring the safety of anyone who comes in to our buildings by applying published court and tribunal coronavirus safety controls, including an organisational risk assessment, assessment tool and additional guidance for regular court users. These have been endorsed by Public Health England and Public Health Wales.
Where courts and tribunals are closed, we’ll contact parties directly to confirm new hearing arrangements. We’ll contact those parties whose hearings were scheduled to happen first, and work our way through the list as quickly as possible. Please be patient while we do this, and avoid making contact if you can.
We’re continuing to avoid physical hearings and arranging remote hearings wherever possible. Anyone who requires technical support for a telephone or video hearing can call 0330 8089405.
Crown Courts are dealing with a range of work, much of which is being done remotely. This includes sentencing hearings and all urgent applications including applications for bail and applications to extend custody time limits. Pre-trial preparation hearings and further case management hearings are also taking place.
Magistrates’ courts continue to cover urgent work, such as cases where the defendant is being held in police or prison custody. The courts are also dealing with Domestic Violence Protection Orders and giving priority to offences which are committed in circumstances linked to the present coronavirus pandemic. Magistrates' court cases update: w/c 8 June 2020 (PDF, 236KB, 1 page).
Various other work including police traffic prosecution prosecutions, is being with dealt with remotely using the Single Justice Procedure.
We are making plans to start dealing with other cases where the defendant is on bail, during June.
All questions about paying an outstanding criminal court fine should be sent to our National Compliance and Enforcement Service at NCESBCT@justice.gov.uk or call 0300 123 9252.
The Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber has made changes to the way it currently works. Since Thursday 30 April 2020, all Judicial Review applications can be lodged using email. Upper Tribunal IAC Judicial Review changes (PDF, 173KB, 2 pages).
