The Judicial Office provided examples last week of remote justice in practice in the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) and Care Standards (CS) jurisdictions, and the Tax Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal.
Fully video hearings are taking place in the SEND and CS jurisdictions. Judge Meleri Tudur, Deputy Chamber President in Health, Education and Social Care said planning has been put in place to ensure digital bundles are available weeks in advance. All hearings can be held remotely, and a team of 15 registrars are poised to take over remotely should the office move to a skeleton staff.
Judge Tudur said feed back to date has been ‘very positive’.
‘Many of our hearings have eight or ten participants, as well as the panel. Some local authority representatives are finding it difficult to join by video using corporate laptops because of firewalls, but every Kinly video hearing room has a dedicated telephone number permitting them to join by phone if they don’t have a video facility.’
Video hearings are also working well in the Tax Chamber, where Judge Barbara Mosedale has been able to preside over hearings from her home. Currently, fully video hearings can only accommodate the judge and four participants, and cannot be recorded. However, the Judicial Office said it hopes to increase participation to seven participants plus the judge, and to make it audio recordable, by mid-May.
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