BREAKFAST AND THEN HEADING HOME

It’s Tuesday morning, and after helping another meditator set out breakfast and serve porridge and stewed fruit to the meditators who have given up their time to work on a general service period at the meditation centre (and eat breakfast myself), we are heading up to the meditation hall to sit together (known as a “group sit”) for an hour.

This is something that we do three times a day when serving at the centre. Sit together in silence in the meditation hall doing Vipassana meditation for an hour each time.

The group sit ends at 9 a.m. and I head back to the caravan where I have been staying for the last two weeks, to pack the last of my things and clean up the room. Then I head to the centre office with my luggage to say goodbye to the meditators that I have served with, and to let the centre managers know that I am ready whenever a driver is available to drop me at the nearest bus stop for a bus in to Hereford where I am catching a train back home.

The bus arrives on time and the 20 minute ride in to Hereford through the countryside is uneventful. Arriving in Hereford town centre around 10:30 a.m. I realise that I have misread my train times from my Iphone google calendar (phone has been switched off for the last two weeks), and I have until 2:30 p.m. before I need to be at Hereford station for my booked train. So, what to do? I am carrying two large bags – mostly full of dirty laundry from the last two weeks - and have a backpack with my electronics and notebooks in it. So not exactly travelling light!

Stood on the junction of Widemarsh Street and Blue School Street with two bags of luggage, I debate my options. And then I see a sign – Hereford Justice Centre – just a few minutes walk away along Blue School Street.

I quickly dial up the entry on Courtserve for Hereford Magistrates Court to check that the Court is sitting today. Yes! A Libra list of cases with cases listed for 10:00, 12:00, 14:00 and 15:00. I make a decision – some courtwatching before lunch it is then!

Picking up my luggage, I make my way along Blue School Street to the Justice Centre. My first reaction on seeing the centre was – Whoah! how did the main entrance door glass get smashed like that?

Second thought looking at the steep steps – I am glad I am not in a wheelchair or otherwise mobility impaired. Although there is a ramp at the side of the building, there does not appear to be any button to press to open the doors, or to summon assistance. And no notice that I could see that provided contact details for a person to request assistance by phone.

HEREFORD JUSTICE CENTRE

Climbing up the steep steps, I heaved open the shattered door and walked up to the reception desk with my two handfuls of luggage. “Good morning”, I said to the security guard at the desk. “I would like to have a look at the list of cases being heard today, please”, and placed my luggage on the floor beside me.
The security guard paused and then pulled out a list of cases on a clipboard and offered it to me. “Thank you, but I would really like to see the list that is posted outside the Courtroom, if that is possible? I have seen the list of cases published online on the Courtserve system and would like to check whether that matches what is shown outside the Courtroom”.

The security guard advised me that the list would be up the stairs outside the Court and indicated that he would have to search all my luggage before I could enter the Court building. “No problem”, said I, “I have just been to a silent meditation centre for two weeks, so the bags are just full of dirty laundry. You are welcome to search whatever you want to. I unzipped the first bag and that was searched thoroughly. Similarly for the second bag. And finally my rucksack with laptop, which the security guard opened momentarily and then closed again. “Where is the meditation centre?”, asked the security guard. “Between here and Ross-on-Wye”, I replied. “Ah yes”, said the security guard. “I know it - my brother went there.”

And so, after going through the archway and a scan with the wand, I was allowed in to the Courthouse with my two large bags of luggage and backpack. I climbed up the stairs at the end of the lobby and arrived at the entrance doors to the Court waiting area.

YOU CANNOT DO THAT

Entering the waiting area through the double doors, I saw two more security guards – one positioned just by the entrance doors and another at the far right of the area. In front of me were rows of seats with the entrance to Court 2 immediately opposite the entrance doors. Apart from a couple further down the area, I was the only member of the public present, as far as I could see. I put my luggage down at the end of one row of seats and, taking my A4 notebook out of my back pack, I started to look at the various notices on noticeboards around the waiting area, looking for the list of cases.

At the far left corner was the noticeboard I was looking for. This had a Common Platform hearing list with two cases for the same person (Matt Atkins) listed on it, and underneath a Libra list with 24 cases listed on it. I opened my notebook and copied down the details from the Common Platform list and counted the entries on the Libra list and made a note in my notebook. I was immediately challenged by one of the security guards who had come up next to me and was looking at what I was writing.

“You cannot copy names down”, I was told. “Pardon?”, I replied. “This is public information. It is posted online”, and I showed the person the display of the listing showing on my Iphone. The security guard who had spoken to me seemed puzzled, but did not give me any more commands. I finished what I was doing and returned to my seat. Two more security guards had appeared including the one who had searched my luggage when I arrived.

Over the tannoy, a case was called for Court 2.

A person who it transpired was the Court Usher came up to me and asked me for my name. I declined to provide my name, saying instead that I was a member of the public and was not connected with any of the cases being heard today. “I do not need to provide my name, is that correct?”, I asked. The Usher replied, “We like to know who is here.” “Yes, I know you do”, I replied, “but I do not have ro give you my name, do I? Anyone can just come in and observe cases, so long as they are not a witness? And I am allowed to copy down information from the hearing list, aren’t I? I know I cannot use my phone to take a photograph of the list, but I can copy down the details if I want to?” The Court Usher agreed that this was allowed.

The Court Usher asked if I was intending to observe any cases. I replied that I wanted first to check out why there was a case on the noticeboard that had not been published on the Courtserve system, but that yes, I would probably then like to observe a hearing or two. “Well, you will not be able to take your luggage in to Court with you”, advised the Usher, “and staff here cannot be responsible for its safety.”
“That is not a problem”, I replied. It is only dirty washing from two weeks at a meditation centre, so if anyone wants to walk off with it, they are welcome to." I sat down and got my laptop out to look more closely at the Courtserve listing for Hereford Magistrates Court for Tuesday 15 April 2025.

One of the projects I have been undertaking since April 2024, is to monitor the publication of Common Platform hearing lists on the Courtserve platform. Courtel who run this service, has a contract with HMCTS to published the hearing lists for the Magistrates Courts in England and Wales. HMCTS has an agreement with Courtel that Courts will email to Courtel both the Libra lists and the Common Platform lists by 5pm on the working day prior to a hearing, and Courtel have undertaken to check and publish each list within 60 minutes of receipt of the list.

Cases in the Magistrates Courts are listed on one of two systems. The Libra system which has been in use for some years and which automatically sends a list to Courtel for publication, and the more modern Common Platform system, which requires each Magistrates Court to extract the correct list from the CP system and to manually email that list to Courtel for publication. The format of the CP list has also changed following an amendment to the Criminal Procedure Rules 2020 which came in to force on 7 October 2024 and now Courts are required to include details of the alleged offence in the list sent to Courtel for publication online. A different list which omits the details of the alleged offence is the version which the Courts print and display outside the Courtroom. So, for the hearings in the Hereford Justice Centre on Tuesday 15 April 2025, the listing department, which is actually located at South Worcestershire Court and which produces the lists for that Court as well as for Hereford Magistrates Court, should have sent to Courtel two lists for Hereford – one, the Libra list of cases – and two, the Common Platform list of cases. But the Common Platform list – with the two cases for Matt Atkins to be heard at 10:00 a.m. – was missing from the Courtel system.

I have a contact at Courtel with whom I have been corresponding over the last year on this project, so I phoned up Courtel to enquire as to whether they had received a CP list for Hereford. It transpires that neither Hereford CP lists nor South Worcestershire CP lists had been sent by the South Worcestershire listing team for the last three months. They used to be sent – as my records show – there were lists in November and December 2024, but nothing at all in 2025. For some reason, the South Worcestershire listing team had simply stopped sending the lists – and Courtel had not noticed this and no-one else apparently checks.

You see, it is not possible from the position of being a member of the public to know whether the Courts have made a mistake and not sent a CP list, or whether there has been a technical issue (as happened with Coventry, I think) which prevented Courtel publishing the Coventry lists, or whether - as can often happen – there are simply no CP cases listed at a particular Court for a particular day. As CP cases are often, but not always, Crown Prosecution cases, if, as happens at some Courts, the CPS does not work on a Friday, then there would not be a CP list for that Court on a Friday. But each Court is different, so the absence of a CP list for a particular Court on one particular day cannot be predicted.

From a public point of view, the absence of a list MAY be simply that there are no CP cases listed, or it may be that the CP ought to have been published but something has prevented that list from being seen by the public. Almost every day around 20-30 Courts fail to publish a CP list, and each time that I have checked with those Courts it turns out that between 5 – 10 of them ought to have published but this did not happen. The reasons vary, but the effect is the same. The list that ought to have been published does not get to Courtel or is rejected for one reason or another.

Them there is the vexed question of the content of the CP list when it is actually published. The list should include the names of the magistrates or the judge who will be sitting in the Courtroom that day, the name of the defendant, the case number, the time of the hearing, the details of the alleged offence, the name of the prosecuting authority and the stage of the case. Also whether the case is subject to any reporting restrictions.

I pointed out to the Court Usher that the CP case that was listed for hearing had not been published on the Courtserve system. She advised me that this was way above her pay grade and had no idea who I should contact to enquire about this.

I decided to try the new Contact Centre that HMCTS want the public to use instead of contacting the local Court directly. After about 20 minutes on the phone to the national contact centre, I managed to get them to put me through to the listing department in South Worcestershire that produced the lists for the Hereford Magistrates Court. They could not explain why it was that there was a case listed at Hereford that had not been notified to Courtserve and suggested that I email in details of my enquiry. I advised them that I already had a contact email for that department (and my records show that I had been in touch in the past with that listing group).

Having done all that I reasonably could to try and get the omission from the Courtserve system at least under investigation by Courtel and by the listing department at South Worcestershire Court, I decided to try and spend some time actually observing some hearings before the Magistrates.

The Court Usher had advised me a couple of times that the Court were about to hear a CVP, Cloud Video Platform case, and I could here her from the office adjacent to the waiting area speaking with the defendant to try and sort out technical issues with access to the platform. I decided to wait for the next case to be called before I went in to the Courtroom to observe. At around 11:53 the Court Usher came over to me and told me that “there was no-one in Court at the moment. They will be discussing things. When the cases start I will take you in. OK?”

I knew that, actually, the public ARE allowed in to Court at any time that the Court is sitting (unless the magistrates or the judge order otherwise), and if they were “only discussing things”, that the public were entitled to observe these “things”, but I decided not to make an issue at this stage. [Even a seasoned Court observer can get weary of having to assert their rights each time they want to just observe as the public have a right to do, and get beaten in to acquiescence. I am ashamed to say I did just that: I acquiesced and sat quietly waiting to be called.]

Finally at 11:59 the Court Usher came over and told me that they were dealing with non-attenders and I could observe, so leaving my two bags of dirty laundry beside the seating area and under the watchful gaze of the security guards, I finally entered Courtroom 2.

AND SO IN TO COURT 2

On the bench in front of me were three magistrates – Mrs Bromley, the chair of the bench, seated in the middle with to her right, Mr Sinclair-Knipe and to her left, Mrs Preston. The legal advisor to the magistrates, Mrs Bagshaw, was seated just in front of, and below, the magistrates. (When I entered the Court, I did not know the names and there were no nameplates in the Courtroom – these details were provided later by the Court Usher).

The public seats were at the rear of the Court but in the main body of the Court – not behind plexi-glass in a separate area for the public, as is the case in other Courts I have visited. So there was no difficulty in seeing and hearing the magistrates, the legal advisor, the probation officer and the defendant. I sat down, took out my notebook and prepared to listen and record what I could.

As I entered a female probation officer that I had seen earlier in the waiting area was stood on the right hand side of the Court behind a desk addressing the magistrates. The discussion was about Probation cases that were several years old, and a request for the magistrates to extend the time for completion of an order to do unpaid work.

Discussion were part-way through and were somewhat incoherent as a result, so the following should not be taken to be a verbatim record of what was said - I was still struggling to understand the context and content of what was being discussed.

The magistrates were querying why the Probation service were seeking to extend the time for completion of the Order. And whether the order had already been extended or not. The Probation Officer who was addressing the magistrates did not seem to know the case particularly well. It seems that decisions to request an extension of an Order come from a centralised enforcement hub and the person in Court is simply relaying the request from the Hub to the magistrates.

The decision of the magistrates, given by Mrs Bromley, the chair of the bench, and who was obviously a very experienced magistrate, was given in precise legal language summarising in a short sentence the decision – which was to extend the order for 12 months from 13 September 2024 to 12 September 2025 for the remaining 9 hours of unpaid work.

The probation officer then moved on to the case of Mr Karl Brown, case 2500012273, and advised the bench that this case had been managed by a trainee. She had sent Mr Brown a text message but had not had a reply. And there was a question of a query with the enforcement hub. There was reference to a Court of Appeal case which I did not catch. And that this was an application to extend an order for unpaid work. There was mention that the Probation officer was going to have to contact Mr Brown.

The magistrates observed that this case was 3 years old!

Mrs Bromley addressed the probation officer and said, quite firmly, “there is a responsibility for the probation service to bring these breaches promptly … and not to wait. The bench is not willing to extend the order. Application refused and dismissed. The order has effectively ended.”

The Court then moved on to the case of Mr Rory Hedley, case 2500012354. It seemed that Mr Hedley had not received a letter and the probation service were asking for the case to be adjourned to 13 May. The defendant had retrospective medical evidence that he wanted to put before the Court.

Then Christian White, case 2500012281. The probation officer had tried to phone Mr White twice with no reply and had spoken to his Offender Manager. There was a question as to whether Mr White was fit to do unpaid work. He was subject to two orders – one from the magistrates Court made on 24 October 2023 for 15 months, which had just ended and could be extended. The other from the Crown Court made on 16 July 2024 for 16 months. The application from the enforcement hub was to remove the unpaid work element as Mr White had an ongoing shoulder issue.

The magistrates decided that they could deal with the order made by the magistrates but that the other order would have to be dealt with by the Crown Court.

The probation officer reported that Mr White had been unable to engage with an ETE course due to dyslexia, but the unpaid work remained outstanding.

The magistrates agreed to adjourn the case until 13 May and commented that, if Mr White was unable to do unpaid work, then they could consider revoking that order and resentencing.

The legal advisor then addressed the bench regarding the next case to be heard, Oliver Price case 2500011013 / 22RS1045425. She read out some details of the case to the bench and a short discussion took place.

The Usher escorted Mr Price in to the Courtroom.

Mr Price was asked to stand behind a table at the rear of the Court. The legal advisor asked Mr Price to confirm his name, address and date of birth. Mr Price was 23 years old.

Mr Price had submitted a statutory declaration and was asking the magistrates to re-open his case.
Basically Mr Price has been speeding, doing 43 mph in a 30 mph limit. He had received a fixed penalty notice from the police offering him the option of paying £100 fine and 3 points on his licence, which he had accepted and paid the fine and posted off his licence details.

He reported being shocked to receive a Court summons in January 2025 to which he had plead guilty. He then received notification of a £500 fine and 4 penalty points on his licence. The following day he received from the Royal Mail a returned envelope with the notification of his driving licence details that he had sent off – marked “stamp missing”. He assured the magistrates that he had put a stamp on the envelope before he posted it. His licence prior to this matter was clean and he was an HGV driver. He told the magistrates that he had been advised to submit a statutory declaration and to ask for the case to be reopened and for late mitigation to be heard. On the original Court date he did not have proof to put before the Court but received that proof – the returned envelope from the Royal Mail – on the following day.

His case was that he had done his best to comply with all that had been asked of him. He did not dispute that he was speeding. He accepted that he had been. He had paid the fine and sent off his licence details. Through now fault of his own, he now found himself in this position. When questioned, he agreed that the fine that he had paid had recently been returned to him by the police.

The magistrates and the legal advisor had a discussion about whether the bench had jurisdiction to hear the case. The chair of the bench asked the legal advisor whether the case could be reopened “in the interests of justice”. The legal advisor was of the opinion that section 142 of the Magistrates Courts Act 1980 only allowed the Court to reopen the case if there had been an error by the Court and that she was struggling to find that the Court had made a mistake.

At this point I took out my mobile phone, which was on silent, and looked up section 142 of the Act to see what it actually said. Whilst the heading was “Power to rectify mistakes etc.” section 142, which was amended by Criminal Appeal Act 1995, now reads:
S142(1) :-

“A magistrates’ court may vary or rescind a sentence or other order imposed or made by it when dealing with an offender if it appears to the court to be in the interests of justice to do so; … “

I looked up to see the legal advisor stood in front of me asking in a very harsh tone of voice, “is that a mobile phone? You cannot use a mobile phone”. I replied, “I am just looking up section 142 of the Magistrates Court Act 1980 to see what it says. Are you able to provide me with a copy of that section for me to read, then?”

“That is not a service which we provide to the public”, retorted the legal advisor, returning to her seat in front of the bench. But she then went over to the nearby bookshelf, took down a book and took it back to her desk and opened it. My guess is that she was herself looking up that very section, as she soon after turned to the chair of the bench and advised that one of the reasons that the matter could be reopened was “in the interests of justice” and the other one was “to rectify a mistake”.

The magistrates clearly were minded to reopen the case and started to discuss with the legal advisor how they could effectively restore the penalty to 3 points on the licence and a fine of £100. The magistrates consulted their guidance but had a difficulty as they explained to Mr Price that, given the speed he was travelling at, they had no choice but to award 4 penalty points on his licence. However the fine, which in the magistrates court had to have a victim surcharge, could be one of £70 plus the surcharge. Having discussed all this, the chair of the bench then addressed Mr Price:

OK, Mr Price. This is a very unfortunate situation. Maybe you should have used registered post. We recognise that you have been put to a degree of stress and inconvenience. You did your best to comply with the fixed penalty procedures. The fine will be £70 and a victim surcharge of £28 making £98 in total. Are you able to pay that?

Mr Price replied that he could.

In that case payment in full within 28 days. And 4 points on your licence.

Mr Price asked if he needed to do anything with his licence and was advised that, no, he had to do nothing with his licence as there was no paper part anymore. The points would come off his licence and would then go back on again.

So Mr Price left the Court with an additional point on his licence (the police had offered 3 points and the magistrates sentencing guidelines required 4 points) and a fine of £98 instead of the fixed penalty of £100 (or it might have been £120, this was not clear). But this was obviously a big improvement on the £500 fine that the Court had previously imposed in his absence.

The Court dealt shortly with another case where the defendant had not attended and was advised that another case had been withdrawn.

The bench were advised that another two cases were being added to the list – Hanran Thomas and Eileen Smith, which were both alleged fly-tipping cases. The magistrates then retired for lunch with the legal advisor calling out “All stand” and we all stood as the bench left the Court by the door at the back of the Court.

I headed out of the Courtroom and had a discussion with the Court Usher about what had happened that morning, explaining who I was and how the way in which I had been treated as a member of the public interested in observing Court hearings had made me feel and how it could discourage other members of the public from coming to observe hearings.

The Court Usher explained that it was the presence of my two bags of luggage which made the staff think it was "unusual", as if this was a reason for me to have been treated in the way that I had been earlier. But the discussion was good natured and she was obviously trying to be as helpful as possible, now that she understood who I was and why I had come to the Court.

Thanking her for her time, and her promise to provide some training to the security staff, some of whom were new in their posts, I gathered up my bags and headed off to have some lunch before my afternoon train home.

SO, IN SUMMARY, WHAT DID I FIND AT HEREFORD JUSTICE CENTRE?

Security staff who were in need of some training in what Open Justice in the Courts requires of them. Yes, they are there to protect the Court and the Judiciary, Court staff and the Court users. But they are also there to promote Open Justice and should know that members of the public ARE entitled to copy down details from the Court lists – indeed, a member of the public should, on request, be provided with a copy of those lists.

The public are also entitled to attend and observe without being required to provide their names. It is quite legitimate for staff to check that someone is NOT a witness in a case, or if they are a witness, to ensure that they do not observe that particular case until after they have given their evidence. But that could be ascertained by asking a person if they are a witness in a case listed to be heard that day. If not, then they are not required to provide a name or any other identification details. Rather than being questioned, any member of the public should instead be welcomed and encouraged to observe the proceedings.

The Court Usher also should perhaps be trained to understand that, whenever the Court is in session, that is, whenever the door of the Courtroom is unlocked, members of the public are entitled to enter the Courtroom to observe - even if the professionals in there are “just chatting”. And the public can enter and leave freely whenever they wish.

Court listings on the Courtserve system should be published by 6pm the working day before a hearing, which means that both Libra and Common Platform hearing lists in the correct format! should be emailed to Courtel for publication on the Courtserve system by 5pm on the working day before a hearing. If that list changes then an updated list should be emailed urgently to Courtel.

The legal advisor should know that both laptops and mobile phones ARE allowed in to Court provided that the phones are switched to silent and that no calls are made to or from the phone in the Courtroom. Calls can be made and taken in the waiting area provided that this does not disturb others who are waiting there. I will have to find the letter from the Lady Chief Justice reminding Court staff of these rules and forward it to Hereford Justice Centre.

POSTSCRIPT

I have located the letter from Baroness Carr regarding public access to courts and in particular laptops and other devices (ie mobile phones) being taken in to criminal courts, and the guidance to which the letter refers ...

INTERESTING LEGAL ISSUE

Mr Price's case raises an interesting legal point regarding the extent to which section 142 of Magistrates Court Act 1980 gives the magistrates the power to effectively resentence where the defendant has already entered a guilty plea and received a sentence (in this case 4 points on his licence and a find of some £500).

The legal advisor raised the question of "mistake" with the bench, but seemed to have been persuaded that the "interests of justice" in s142(1) provided the basis for the bench to reopen the case, which is what happened.

I subsequently did a search for other instances of the use of s142 in this way, and came across this article which discussed a Court of Appeal case R (on the application of Williamson) v City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court [2012] EWHC 1444 (Admin); R (Williamson) v City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court [2012] Cr App R 24. This would seem to me to suggest that Hereford Magistrates did NOT have the power to reopen Mr Price's case and effectively reduce his fine from £500 to £98.