Advocates claiming fees for breach of bail hearings can now submit attendance notes as evidence of work they have carried out.
This applies only to breach of bail hearings held in the magistrates' court as part of Crown Court proceedings.
The process will be used during rollout of the common platform digital case management system and does not apply to hearings in the Crown Court.
Why is this happening now?
We are putting this process in place because of issues with the existing case management systems.
These will be resolved when the common platform rollout of a new digital case management system has been completed.
What are the issues?
Difficulties have been experienced obtaining the necessary proof of attendance from the existing Libra case management system. This is used for magistrates' court work.
There is no provision for these attendances to be recorded in the Xhibit case management system for Crown Court work.
As the common platform rollout progresses the issue should gradually disappear.
This is because the new digital case management system will allow us to validate your attendance.
What information do you require?
You need to ensure that your attendance note includes the following pieces of information when making a standard attendance fee (SAF) claim:
-
date of hearing
-
name of advocate attending
-
alleged breaches e.g. what was breached and how
-
details of Crown Court case or cases e.g. court case management 'T' number and name of court
