City’s Nightingale Court will operate until March 2022
A NIGHTINGALE Court set up in a Nottingham hotel will continue to operate until March next year.
The temporary court, at the Mercure Nottingham Sherwood Hotel in Mansfield Road, was set up to tackle a backlog of thousands of cases due to the pandemic.
Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) has announced that the service there will be extended.
As of January, there were more than 8,000 outstanding cases at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court and over 1,000 at Nottingham Crown Court.
The manager of a pub near the hotel said the court had been good for business.
Gemma Fisher, 39, general manager of The Grosvenor, said: “If fewer people are in there to eat then we usually get people coming in here for food so it’s worked to our benefit – I absolutely cannot complain.
“We have also had jurors coming over here from the hotel for some food and drinks, so business is doing fine and in some ways the court has helped us.
“I would rather those cases get dealt with sooner rather than later.”
She added: “Our pub and the Mercure Hotel look out for each other anyway. When Covid-19 was at its peak some of the hotels were housing homeless people and we did have a couple of incidents of loud arguments going on, but the hotel warned us about it.
“We had the cricket last week at Trent Bridge, so people that were staying at the hotel came over here.”
But Barry Swidenbank, 69, manager of the Cotswold Hotel, disagreed. He said: “I don’t think that a hotel is the right place for a court to be set up.”
The hotel holds two court rooms dealing with Crown Court bail hearings and court users have “provided positive feedback” according to the HMCTS.
A spokesperson for HMCTS said: “The Nightingale Court will continue to help deliver swifter justice for people across Nottingham until March 2022.”