The final piece of this chunk of articles on the judiciary and independence focuses on the structure and make-up of the court system itself – how many courts there should be, what practical/structural things we would need to consider to improve access to justice and the different tiers of courts and tribunals.
Sometime early next year, the final set of posts on a Welsh Justice System will look at crime, punishment and rehabilitation.
The inferior courts of record would be the first court you would attend for criminal cases, as well as civil matters which can’t otherwise be dealt with at one of the tribunals.
At present, the inferior courts are divided into magistrates courts (criminal) – including special youth courts for young offenders (effectively magistrates courts but with special procedures) – county courts (civil), family courts and coroners courts.
Sometimes they’re located in separate court buildings, sometimes they might be within the same building.
If the status quo remains the case then the following wouldn’t matter; we would continue with the current system of separate inferior courts. The only thing to consider is whether to reopen, merge or move some magistrates and other inferior courts.
What I would propose is replacing all of the inferior courts with a single-tier District Court – separated into criminal, civil and family divisions. This would be similar to the Republic of Ireland.
Case handling in the civil and family divisions would likely remain unchanged – cases would be presided over by a district judge (though court positions like recorder would disappear). Coroners could use the district courts to hold inquests instead of having a separate set of courts, while appropriate space could be set aside for use by tribunals.
Wales would have one Chief Coroner and – based on current numbers – up to 10 senior and area coroners and about twice the number of assistant coroners. You would assume coroner districts would match Circuit Court areas (more on that later).
As mentioned in Part XI, how the criminal cases would be decided depends on whether we keep magistrates or not. If we keep them, then three lay magistrates decide the case; if we use district judges instead, then a full-time judge would be used.
My preference would be the latter. In that case, we would probably need at least 45-50 district judges (it largely depends on the expected caseload).
In terms of geography, it could look something like this. Most of the existing magistrates’ courts, some county/family courts and combined justice centres would become new district courts.
Ideally, we would have at least one district court per county and nobody would be more than 30-45 minutes away from a district court – but that might not always be practical.
The priority for reopening would be Anglesey, as well as reopenings and relocations to deal with what the Thomas Commission described as an “arc” from Wrexham to Swansea without court buildings. That doesn’t mean all of the places I’ve suggested for new courts need a new court. You would have to factor in local case load, suitability of locations, whether it meets public transport/travel and accessibility guidelines etc.
In addition to the shortlist of courts that could be prioritised for new-build or reopening, if Blackwood became a District Court that would hear criminal cases – not just the civil cases it does now – then it would either have to be refurbished or moved.
The only procedural difference in terms of appeals – compared to what we have now – is that appeals on points of law/”way of case stated” could go to a Welsh Court of Appeal rather than the High Court (currently dealt with by the Queen’s Bench).
