Court closures ‘pose a threat to open justice’
Senior legal figures call for a halt to sale of region’s buildings
SENIOR LEGAL figures have called for a halt to the ongoing fire sale of Yorkshire’s court buildings, saying it poses a fundamental threat to the principles of open justice.
The region has lost a third of its courts since 2010, as Ministers grapple with major cuts to justice budgets. Now with the fate of another magistrates’ court in North Yorkshire hanging in the balance, and Government ambitions to further reduce the number of buildings in the years to come, the Law Society, which represents solicitors, has called for an urgent pause to the programme.
Richard Miller, the society’s head of justice, said there should be an immediate assessment of the effect of the closures so far before any more went ahead.
He warned an increasing number of criminal court hearings were failing to go ahead because the defendant had failed to make the long journey to court.
He said the closure of courts also meant they were far less accessible to the public. Mr Miller told The Yorkshire Post: “There is no doubt that if you had a particular interest in a local matter and it was going to be heard in a court 30 miles away, you might well think twice about going.”
Meanwhile, with court services being increasingly centralised in larger towns and cities, rural campaigners have warned their communities are being unfairly hit. Cecilia Motley, chairman of the Rural Services Network, said: “Access to justice is a fundamental right, no matter where somebody lives.”
John Bache, JP, chairman of the Magistrates’ Association, said it was right that some underused courts had been closed to save public money from being wasted, but he would have concerns if the closure programme went much further.
He said: “There was a time when every little town had its own court, which just isn’t practical these days, but we don’t want to get to a situation where there are courts in Leeds, York and Sheffield and that’s it.”
The Ministry of Justice said the Government was investing more than £1bn to reform and modernise the courts system in England and Wales and decrease reliance on physical buildings.
A spokeswoman said since 2016, it had raised £115m by selling underused courts, “and every penny of this will be reinvested as part of our modernisation plans”.
She added: “As we increase the use of digital services, it makes sense to consider the wider role and need for court buildings and assess whether some are still necessary.”
THE ECONOMIES of towns, cities and their rural surroundings feel the knock-on economic effects of court closures for many years, MPs and business leaders have warned.
The closures so far have led to the justice system in Yorkshire and the Humber being increasingly centralised into its larger cities and towns, with places such as Halifax, Goole, Pontefract, Selby, Rotherham and Scunthorpe now without any courts at all.
The Law Society’s head of justice Richard Miller said that solicitors’ firms were often the first to be hit when courts closed.
He said: “Solicitors tend to make sure they are located close to the courts and the police stations and both are currently being consolidated at the moment, so solicitors are finding that they can’t keep open their branch offices in towns and cities which have lost their courts and they are having to relocate nearer the courts.
“Of course, that takes with it other services that the solicitor provided.”
He said residents of a town could find themselves losing local access to legal advice about consumer matters, conveyancing or other non-court issues when solicitors were forced to move away.
Mr Miller said in calling for an urgent moratorium on court closures, he wanted the Ministry of Justice to properly assess the impact of this “access to justice more broadly”.
As well as the loss of a large local employer, and the businesses which rely on it, critics say the empty buildings themselves can prove a blight on the towns’ economies if no new occupant is found.
Keighley Magistrates’ Court, which was based not in Keighley but in nearby Bingley, is still sat empty many years after its closure in 2011.
It has now been put up for sale, packaged with the recently closed police station next door, which has links to the court through the cells.
Local MP Philip Davies had raised his concern about the long-vacant site in Parliament, arguing that the £5,000-a-month cost of mothballing the building could well exceed its eventual sale price. The Tory MP for Shipley told
The Yorkshire Post he understood the Government’s reasons for wanting to wait for a decision on the future of the police station before putting the building up for sale.
But he said it had done nothing for the town’s economy to have an empty, decaying building in its centre for all these years.
He said: “You just can’t afford, in a place like Bingley, to have empty buildings sitting there doing nothing and decaying.
“I didn’t want the court to close, or the police station to close for that matter, but given that they have, it is important that they are brought back into use as quickly as possible to generate some sort of economic activity.”
Of the 19 court buildings which have closed so far in Yorkshire and the Humber, half have been in West Yorkshire.
The North and West Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce has expressed concern over the impact of closures on the footfall within town and city centres.
A spokesman said: “It is important that we retain vibrancy within our towns and city centres if they are to compete in an increasingly digital world. Whilst the loss of jobs in these locations is a concern, it is important that we are able to repurpose vacant buildings and ensure commercial activity is retained within them.
“Likewise, access to justice should not depend on where somebody lives.”