Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) District Judges and Magistrates

Dear Mr Speller,

Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) – District Judges and Magistrates

Thank you for your email to the Ministry of Justice Data Access and Compliance Unitdated 19December 2011 in which you asked for the following information:

“For the purposes of the following questions in all cases in which I refer to District Judges, I am referring to those formerly known as Stipendiary Magistrates.

For the period of 1 January 2007 to 2012 I would like to know:

[1] the number of district judges currently employed in Magistrates' Courts in the UK

[2] the number of cases in Magistrates Courts heard by a tribunal of 2 or more justices of the peace

[3] the number of cases in Magistrates Courts heard by district judges.”

Your request has been handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

Your request has been passed to me as I have responsibility for answering requests, which relate to data in Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS). HMCTS is an executive agency of the MoJ and is responsible for the administration of the magistrates' courts, Crown Court centres, county courts, the High Court, Court of Appeal and Tribunals in England and Wales and non-devolved Tribunals in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

I can confirm that Judicial Officeholdsinformation relating to the number of district judges, please see a) below, and that the Ministry of Justice does hold the number of cases heard by district judges and magistrates overall, but cannot break down how many were heard by each.

Outside the scope of the Act please find the number of cases completed in magistrates’ courts between 2008 and 2010 at b) below.

a) A breakdown of the number of judges as at 1 April is published by the Judicial Office each year. This can be found at: http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/publications-and-reports/statistics/diversity-stats-and-gen-overview. Below is a table using data from the Judiciary website showing the number of District Judges and Deputy District Judges as at 1 April between 2007 and 2011.

b) The table below shows the number of cases completed in magistrates’ courts between 2008 and 2010.Provisional data for 2011 will be published by the Ministry of Justice in Court Statistics Quarterly in the spring of 2012. The figures are taken from the HMCTS Performance Database (OPT). Data prior to 2008 was taken from a different data source and are therefore not directly comparable and so not included. The numbers are rounded to the nearest 1,000. We do not hold this data split by the type of judge which heard each case.

For your information, you can find more information by reading the full text of the FOIA available at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/contents and further guidance can be found at http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/freedom-of-information.htm.

Yours sincerely,

Gary Hopper

Gary Hopper

HMCTS Performance, Analysis & Reporting Team

How to Appeal

Internal Review

As part of our obligations under the FOIA, the MoJ has an independent review process. If you are dissatisfied with this decision, you may write to request an internal review. The internal review will be carried out by someone who did not make the original decision, and they will re-assess how the Department handled the original request.

If you wish to request an internal review, please write or send an email to the Data Access and Compliance Unit within two months of the date of this letter, at the following address:

Data Access and Compliance Unit

Information & Communications Directorate

6th Floor

Ministry of Justice

102 Petty France

London

SW1H 9AJ

E-mail:

Information Commissioner’s Office

If you remain dissatisfied after an internal review decision, you have the right to apply to the Information Commissioner’s Office. The Commissioner is an independent regulator who has the power to direct us to respond to your request differently, if he considers that we have handled it incorrectly.

You can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office at the following address:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Internet address: https://www.ico.gov.uk/Global/contact_us.aspx