The Law Commission

APPENDIX C

CASE-LOAD MANAGEMENT ISSUES

Introductory

1.1      In 1992, when the consultation paper was being prepared, there was very great public concern about the scale of the delays in the Crown Office List. We therefore asked respondents^[1] to consider whether these problems should affect the introduction of procedural changes which might otherwise be thought desirable and to comment on the steps which might be taken to improve the availability of judicial review in terms of quality of service. The issues on which views were sought are described in paragraphs 2.12 - 2.13 of our report.
1.2      Apart from universal condemnation of the delays, there were two main themes which cropped up again and again in the responses to consultation:^[2]

(1) The system of nominated judges was generally welcomed, but there were very strong complaints about inconsistency as between different judges in relation to the way in which they exercised their discretion, particularly on the granting of leave. The general effect of the evidence, from all sides, was that the present arrangements were too much of a lottery, and that more must be done to ensure a greater consistency of approach as between different judges.

(2) The unavailability of judicial review outside London was criticised by users, particularly by local authorities more than 75 miles from London.

The nominated judges of the Queen's Bench Division

2.1      There was very strong support for the suggestion that the nominated judges should spend much more of their time hearing Crown Office cases. Many practitioners complained about the inconsistency and unpredictability which were occurring when so many judges, sometimes with no previous public law experience, were sitting for comparatively short periods each year. If these problems, and the problems of delay, could be addressed effectively by fewer nominated judges sitting more often, experienced respondents would favour this course: the inexperienced judge sitting not very often was regarded as inappropriate for this class of work. The Master and Head of the Crown Office felt that 12 judges, nominated for a minimum two-year period, would be all that would be necessary, provided that they were not normally sent on circuit and they sat in London for three week blocks at a time, every other block being occupied by them as a single judge or in the Divisional Court. The need to sit more often on Crown Office cases was also favoured by the nominated judges themselves, by the Administrative Law Bar Association and individual public law Queen's Counsel, by very experienced Court of Appeal judges and by many bodies representing solicitors and court users.
2.2      There was little support for a full-time Administrative Court. The nominated judges, for example, told us that the experience of other disciplines and of the trial process were valuable when taking the Crown Office list, and that none of them would relish working upon the list for more than a stint at any one time: the work is deeply interesting but onerous.

The use of high court judges from other divisions

3.1      Family Division judges are now regularly appointed as additional Queen's Bench judges to hear judicial review cases with a family law element, and Chancery judges sometimes sit in revenue matters where there is a judicial review application proceeding concurrently with an appeal by way of case stated.
3.2      There was no support for an uncontrolled extension of this practice. It was said that special nominations for appropriate cases should continue to be made on an ad hoc basis, and these might also include the nomination of a commercial judge.
3.3      Strong submissions were received, however, from those concerned with VAT appeals that if the right of appeal is not diverted to the Court of Appeal, Chancery judges should be used more often to hear these appeals. We were told that at present, after an inordinate delay, the case may be listed before a Queen's Bench judge who may have had no previous experience with VAT law; the cases take longer to be heard and decisions are not always consistent. In this context we received very powerful evidence from the President^[3] and other chairmen of VAT Appeal Tribunals about the very unsatisfactory nature of the present arrangements, which, they said, are bad for the administration of VAT law.
3.4      Schedules of outstanding appeals produced by Customs & Excise showed the following position:

	JUNE 93	APR 94
1990	1
1991	20	4
1992	49	28
1993	27	54
1994		33
TOTALS	97	119[4]

3.5      An analysis of the 13 appeals in which the High Court hearing started in 1993 showed the average time since the Tribunal decision to be 24.92 months. An increasing number of cases involved construction of the EEC Sixth Directive, and the delay in the domestic appeal process was resulting in more appellants pressing for references to Europe as being quicker in addition to cutting out the higher tiers of appeal. We have also been told that the delay in appeals being heard has a considerable knock-on effect on other appeals to the Tribunal since many of the issues affect other cases also under appeal.

The availability of judges to hear judicial review cases outside London

4.1      There was a noticeable division of opinion between those who had regular practical experience of the work of the Crown Office judges, whether as judges, lawyers or administrators, most of whom favoured the status quo, and those who spoke for court users who made strong representations about the expenditure of time and money and the general inconvenience involved in having to come to London for all hearings.
4.2      Of the 36 who responded on this issue, 27 supported some (often a very limited) degree of decentralisation, and very often on the basis that only a nominated judge should hear cases outside London. Objections were made by the nominated judges and by the Master and Head of the Crown Office on the ground that decentralisation was impracticable, because of the need for a central corps of administrative expertise and first-rate library facilities which could not be matched outside London. Other fears were expressed about inconsistency (particularly if decisions outside London were reported), and strong feelings were expressed that cases against the Crown should be heard in London. Other respondents pointed to the recent research findings^[5] that there was an under-representation of cases from outside London and the South-East and linked this to the unavailability of judges outside that area.

The possibility that certain types of judicial review applications could properly be dealt with by selected circuit judges and Queen's Counsel sitting as deputies.

5.1      We referred in the consultation paper to the use of Queen's Counsel as deputy high court judges hearing planning appeals and homelessness cases. At present, only Queen's Counsel with special expertise are being selected for this work. Respondents, on the whole, favoured the use of deputies for those purposes but were reluctant to see their use extended too far. Certain weaknesses in the present arrangements were, however, identified.
5.2      The use of Queen's Counsel was attacked on the grounds that judicial review cases should only be heard by permanent judges who were visibly and irremovably independent of the Crown. There was a danger of creating a closed community in any field of law, where a person might be an advocate one week and a judge the next, and difficulties have arisen when a Queen's Counsel, sitting as a deputy, is assigned a case where a point of law arises on which he has already advised other clients. The problems of a fast track to deputies and a slow track to high court judges were also a cause for concern. Not everyone was enamoured with the present arrangements.

The possibility that the judicial review jurisdiction might be delegated in certain prescribed cases to the County Court

6.1      The principle that the judicial review jurisdiction should remain in the High Court, as the Civil Justice Review Body recommended, received strong support. Local authority respondents, in particular, stressed the public perception of the authority of the High Court, as opposed to the local county court, over decisions of local authorities.
6.2      However, a lot of attention was paid to the desirability of providing a different statutory regime for handling appeals on points of law from certain local bodies, where the county court might well be the appropriate forum. Quite apart from homelessness cases, decisions of Housing Benefit Review Boards and decisions to grant planning permission were identified as possibly meriting special statutory treatment. Environmental groups, in particular, felt quite strongly about the need for challenges to planning decisions to be available in the local county court on grounds of cost and convenience.
6.3      The Lord Chancellor's Department still accepted the view of the Civil Justice Review Body that the judicial review jurisdiction should remain in the High Court. It agreed that part of the way forward for avoiding unacceptable case-load problems in the future should be by creating appropriate machinery which would spot those categories of business which were now coming in large numbers to the Crown Office List on judicial review, and prejudicing the efficient operation of that List, for want of a more appropriate appellate or supervisory jurisdiction being provided at a lower level.

The present position

7.1      We will start our description of the present situation by giving some statistics.

A. The position at the beginning of 1994, with comparisons with previous years when appropriate, was as follows:

	1990	1991	1992	1993
Applications for leave to apply for Judicial Review	2129	2089	2439	2886
Cases stated	196	199	189	239
Planning and other Statutory appeals and applications	454	580	505	510
TOTALS	2779	2868	3133	3635

B. Total case-load of Crown Office as at 1st January 1994

	1992	1993	1994
Part A	813	805	1439
Part B	1192	1055	1184
Part C	51	94	190
TOTALS	2056	1954	2813

CODE:
Part A Cases awaiting leave, filing of affidavits etc^[6] I
Part B Substantive cases ready to be heard
Part E Substantive cases with fixed dates

C. Waiting times (from entry into Part B) for substantive cases determined in 1993:

	Divisional Court	Single Judge	Planning Deputy	Housing Deputy
Determined in 12 weeks	112	79	19	38
24 weeks	82	41	42	17
52 weeks	238	33	72	11
over 52 weeks	77	85	24	9
TOTALS	429	238	157	75

We have been furnished with statistics relating to the period from 1st January to 31st July 1994, which show very little change from the equivalent period in 1993:

	Jan-July 93	Jan-July 94
Applications for leave to apply for judicial Review	1728	1851
Cases stated	155	141
Planning and other Statutory appeals and applications	308	269
TOTALS	2191	2261

7.3      The Head of the Crown Office has also supplied us with her estimates of projected waiting times (from entry into Part B of the List) as at the end of July 1994.^[7] The present estimates (with the projected waiting times at the same time in 1993 in brackets) are:

Divisional Court	7.3 months	(10.2 months)
Single Judge	12 months	(21.3 months)
Planning List	5.6 months	(9.6 months)

7.4      We have described the developments since 1992, and in particular the steps taken to cope with case-load problems, in paragraph 2.21 of the Report.
7.5      In addition, a Crown Office Users' Association has now been formed, which met for the first time in July 1994. The "waiting time'' for a single judge in Part B of the Crown Office List has been reduced from 23 months in April 1993 to 12 months in July 1994, and we have been told that there is a general aim to reduce this still further to 10 months by the end of 1994. We have also been told that an Annual Report on the state of the List, similar to the one issued each year by the Master of the Rolls in relation to the Court of Appeal, is likely to be produced at the end of this year.

Other developments and proposals

8.1      The nominated judges favoured the introduction of the arrangements we are recommending by which all applications are normally first sent to them to decide on paper. The Head of the Crown Office believes that this change would result in a saving of two out of every four days at present allocated for oral applications.
8.2      During 1994 we have kept closely in touch with the senior judiciary, senior officials of the Lord Chancellor's Department and the Head of the Crown Office in order that the main points raised by respondents could be brought to their attention long before we reported and that this part of our report could be as authoritative and up to date as possible. We were told during these discussions that there was general agreement that targets should be set for management purposes for the different stages of handling a case, and that targets along the following lines should be adopted:

10 days between receipt of papers and sending them to the single judge;

14 days for the single judge to consider the papers and return them to the Crown Office;

70 days for service of the notice of motion and receipt of respondents' affidavits;

Five and a half months (maximum, except for unusual cases) between entry into Part B of the List and the hearing date.

8.3      This would represent a target of nine months from receipt to final disposal at first instance^[8] We were told that the aim would be to reach this target by stages. As we have said, a target of ten months for the final stage of the procedure is being suggested as a realistic target for the end of 1994. A more tentative target, based on workload and available judgepower remaining at their present levels, of eight months for the end of July 1995 has also been recently suggested. The target thereafter would be proportionately lower, and so on, until the ideal target was reached, and then maintained.
8.4      In the second half of 1993 four judges handled more than half the leave applications on paper (323 out of 615) and another four handled a quarter of them (154); and in the first seven months of 1994 eight judges handled nearly 70% of them (520 out of 779).^[9] We raised the question in our discussions whether in the interests of speed and consistency it would be preferable to have a regular smaller cadre of judges handling paper applications, because inconsistency in decisions on leave applications was the single issue which, apart from delay, had caused most concern to our respondents. The findings of the Public Law Project had merely confirmed many respondents' own experience of inconsistencies as between different judges, and it is quite clear from the 1994 statistics we show in Annex 1 that these inconsistencies are continuing, if not in quite such a marked manner as before. Greater consistency might be achieved by the deployment of fewer judges on paper applications.
8.5      Mann LJ^[10] told us that he favoured this proposal, provided that the judges in question could be relieved of their obligations in relation to paper applications under the Criminal Appeal Act 1968, except as volunteers. The numbers to be selected would have to take into account the numbers of leave applications being made if a reliable two-week service was to be maintained. For example, if a judge was to handle 12 applications a fortnight for 44 weeks a year, he would only be able to deal with 264 applications a year, and if he was asked to do more, he might not be able to achieve a two-week turnround if he had to do the work entirely in out-of-court hours.
8.6      The Head of the Crown Office told us that she considered that the present arrangements for the management of the Crown Office List, whereby she consults the judge in charge of the Crown Office List whenever she considers it necessary, work very well for internal management purposes.^[11]
8.7      We mention this because we received unsolicited evidence from some judges and others with great experience in successful judicial management of case-loads who suggested that the Commercial Court, the Jury List and the Non-Jury List provide different examples of what can be achieved in this field if greater attention is paid to the need for strong judicial management of a list. They thought that the judge in charge of the list should have a proactive role, liaising with the bodies from whom appeals and applications are customarily brought, and with other court users, to ensure that the quality of the court's service was maintained and that it was adequately resourced. The publication of an annual report would enable LCD to study trends and to provide additional resources where necessary.
8.8      If arrangements are working well, there seems no good reason to alter them. We have already mentioned the major steps forward which have been taken since our consultation paper was published, and the new Users' Association and the new Annual Report will keep the state of the list firmly in the public domain. We were impressed, however, by evidence which suggested that there is a need to identify more clearly in the public eye the member of the judiciary, as opposed to the staff of the Crown Office, whom outside bodies and individuals should approach if they are concerned with any deterioration in the quality of service, or if they wish to make suggestions for its improvement.
8.9      We will mention one example of this. We encountered a good deal of ignorance about the existence, let alone the identity of the judge in charge of the List. We hope the new arrangements will make it clearer that he is accessible to important non-parties, such as the Heads of Tribunal Groups, who may wish to suggest that particular test cases need to be expedited because uncertainty in the law is causing substantial detriment to the administration of justice in tribunals or to good public administration at central or local level. If leading cases on new branches of the law can be decided after an expedited hearing, this, too, has the potential for reducing the size of the overall case-load.
8.10      At the end of 1993 there was a trend towards deploying much of the available nominated high court judgepower in court to dealing with leave applications. For substantive hearings there is still a much faster track for disposal by deputies, and a much slower track for disposal by high court judges.^[12] There was general agreement during our discussions in 1994 that waiting periods ought to be identical in any coherent system.
8.11      Kennedy LJ, who is now responsible for the deployment of Queen's Bench judges, told us that every nominated judge will now, as a general rule, sit as a single judge for half of every half-term he sits in London. In other words, he will sit as a single judge at least 9-10 weeks every year, even if he is out on circuit for half each term, and if he spends a full term in London, he will spend half that term on single judge work. We share the views expressed by senior judges that the work is physically and intellectually demanding, and that it is not desirable for a judge to sit as a single judge for more than three or four weeks at a time. These changes represent a very marked improvement on 199 1 when two out of the 18 nominated judges sat as single judges for a combined total of three weeks in the whole year.^[13]
8.12      The Head of the Crown Office told us that she estimated that if the case-load continued at its present level it would require a regular allocation of six single judges from January 1995 onwards before the delays could be brought within a target of six months in Part B. Kennedy LJ told us that he could see no way of making more than four single high court judges available at any one time, in addition to the nominated judges who are deployed to sit in the Divisional Court if a Lord Justice who was not himself a nominated judge is sitting there. Even if circuit judges are invited to sit in the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) once the new Criminal Justice Bill becomes law, he told us that there is very great unsatisfied demand for high court judgepower in other parts of the system which would be likely to absorb any judgepower released from the Court of Appeal under the new arrangements. We are aware that discussions are going on about the possibility of using single judges more often instead of two-judge Divisional Courts, but this change would not ease the problems at all, so far as high court judgepower is concerned.
8.13      This necessarily means that the use of deputies would have to be extended to bring the backlog down to acceptable proportions and for the new target times to be adopted and maintained. This could not be achieved so long as the present budgetary constraints on the engagement of deputies continue. During the first quarter of 1994 there were nine deputies approved for hearing planning appeals and eight approved for judicial review (particularly homelessness cases). The present budget permits the engagement of deputies for only 45 sitting days in each of the four legal terms. LCD told us that the funding of a greater use of deputies would not be a problem, because expenditure that can be shown to reduce waiting times from unacceptable levels is given priority. However, it is apparently proving extremely difficult to arrange for the approved non-planning deputies to sit at all frequently in termtime.
8.14      It was suggested during our discussions that the problems relating to VAT appeals would be mitigated if a judge of the Chancery Division could be assigned to hear VAT appeals as an additional judge of the Queen's Bench Division for, say, three weeks each term. If this could be done, the other changes which will be taking place ought to reduce the overall scale of the delays there, and the identification and acceleration of leading cases ought also to improve things in this field. If they do not, more radical measures, such as the transfer of the jurisdiction to the Chancery Division, might have to be considered. We did not favour the creation of a direct right of appeal to the Court of Appeal, because very often the most important legal issues have not properly crystallised at the tribunal level. This is not for any fault of the very experienced tribunal chairmen, but because skilled counsel are very often not engaged by the parties until an appeal reaches the High Court.
8.15      The Lord Chancellor's Department also wished to see sufficient judges sitting at any one time to justify a floating list for Crown Office judges, instead of a fixed list which does not allow for last-minute settlements. The Head of the Crown Office considered that there was a need for a minimum of four single judges at any one time for a floating list to operate satisfactorily. The senior judiciary, however, was opposed to the introduction of a floating list: the case-load of a single judge is extremely heavy during his 3- or 4- week stint, and if cases do go unexpectedly short he has plenty of reading (or writing reserved judgments) to do. They did not want to have arrangements under which a hearing could not be guaranteed on the day the parties were brought to court. We can see the force of these objections.
8.16      We were persuaded that there were strong arguments for retaining the main elements of the present arrangements by which cases in the Crown Office List are handled centrally in London. It may be that if particular items (homelessness, possibly housing benefit review cases)^[14] could be diverted in the first instance to local county courts or independent tribunals, the strength of the feeling that on cost and convenience grounds there should be access points outside London might be reduced. It would be quite impracticable to divert a nominated high court judge on circuit away from heavy criminal and civil cases onto judicial review cases: any nominated judge would have to go as a Crown Office judge for Crown Office cases to a major circuit town if any worthwhile experiment was to be made. Kennedy LJ told us that if a nominated judge was in a town on circuit, there was no reason in principle why, subject to liaison with presiding judges and listing officers, he should not hear Crown Office cases there, although he did not suggest that this would make a substantial contribution to the problem.
8.17      We accept the view of the Head of the Crown Office that there must be a central registry in London at which all Crown Office applications are lodged, and that all orders, too, should be issued from London even if substantive hearings took place before nominated judges on circuit. She told us that the Crown Office would be able to identify substantive cases which could be heard more conveniently at centres outside London if such an experiment was considered desirable.
8.18      The strength of the evidence was such that we consider that it might be worthwhile exploring the feasibility of a Crown Office List centre outside London, starting with one, and possibly two major circuit centres. This experiment would require an adequate local library and adequate staff training, and almost certainly a specially selected and trained circuit judge, whose efforts would be complemented by visiting High Court judges from the Crown Office List for 2-week or 3-week stints away from London as necessary. This would be in addition to any arrangements which might be made for nominated judges to hear Crown Office cases as part of their list when they are out of London at other circuit centres.
8.19      The Lord Chancellor's Department's view was that while there would be many practical problems in creating a Crown Office List at, say, Manchester, a pilot experiment might be very valuable. Any such experiment would have to be closely monitored, and managed by the judiciary, to ensure proper attention to consistency and predictability and quality of judicial service.
8.20      It is presumably now unrealistic to expect any significant increase to the numbers or availability of high court judges for Crown Office work, although the evidence shows that the problems of delay and quality of service will not be adequately addressed, on the present caseload levels, unless there is a slightly larger cadre of high court judges appointed to do this work at any one time: in other words, five single judges as a general rule instead of four. Kennedy LJ made his view quite clear to us that with the present complement of judges no more high court judges can be released for Crown Office work. Deputies must therefore be used, if only on pragmatic grounds, at any rate so long as the case-load remains at its present level and the present delays continue. There should, however, be clearly defined criteria for their use, and the arrangements must be closely monitored.^[15]
8.21      The following issues seem to be relevant:

(1) There must not be a fast-track and slow-track system. Such arrangements have already cut high court judges out of hearing any planning appeals at all, they are having the same effect with homelessness cases, and there would be similar encroachments onto other areas of Crown Office work, so far as substantive hearings are concerned, unless the suggested reforms to the procedure for leave applications were implemented.

(2) In principle it is much more desirable that a full-time judge, specially selected if he or she is a circuit judge, should hear these cases, rather than a Queen's Counsel. It has been suggested that if it was known that a selected circuit judge would be hearing Crown Office cases for a significant part of his or her working year, it might be possible to recruit as judges some of those who have the requisite expertise but who are now staying at the Bar because they are unattracted by the present mix of work which circuit judges handle. This would be a natural extension of special selection of circuit judges for murder and rape cases; for the commercial lists outside London; for official referees' business; for Children Act cases; and for patent Cases. Any extension of the present use of Queen's Counsel as deputies in the field of judicial review raises, in our opinion, well justified objections on constitutional grounds.

(3) Provided that suitable deputies can be identified and their deployment is under the control of the senior judiciary there should be no objection to the use of deputies for all types of hearing, if appropriate cases are identified as being suitable for a deputy. The paper applications should be restricted to the nominated high court judges. The use of deputies should be confined, as the nominated judges suggest, to cases whose interest is limited to the interests of the parties to the particular case.

8.22      We were told that the Lord Chancellor's Department would willingly explore the possibility of deploying more circuit judges for Crown Office work. Experience has taught the Lord Chancellor's Department that developments of this kind are usually more successful if they have the encouragement and approval of the senior judiciary, and we detected a great willingness on all sides to find mutually acceptable solutions to the present difficulties.
8.23      We are satisfied that no case has been made out for transferring any part of the High Court's supervisory jurisdiction to the county court. On the other hand, there is a case for exploring, on a continuing basis, whether special statutory mechanisms should be introduced for appeals on points of law to the county court (and, thence, with leave, to the Court of Appeal) in particular types of case for which no appeal at all is provided at present. A more extensive regime for analysis of the case-load and a greater degree of judicial management of the Crown Office List would lead to the identification of categories of case where the introduction of a special statutory appeal mechanism would be desirable. This would mean that cases could be heard at more convenient local centres, without the necessity of all of them having to go to the High Court in London.

Conclusion

9.1      We believe that if all these developments take place, they should set the stage for a regime in which delays are brought down to an acceptable level, and are not then permitted to rise again. We believe that the secrets for success will lie in an approach which combines the following features:

(1) The agreement and achievement of target times for the management of judicial business in the Crown Office List.

(2) The identification and removal of avoidable pinchpoints:

(i) Judges being wastefully used in hearings in court when they could handle the business more efficiently on paper in the first instance;

(ii) A smaller cadre of judges being picked to handle all the preliminary consideration of applications (i.e. leave) on paper, thereby achieving greater consistency and predictability and eliminating unnecessary oral hearings;

(iii) Continuous monitoring of the case-load to identify areas of business which are overloading the High Court for want of a review procedure at an appropriate level;

(iv) The acceptance by Government of the need to provide alternative appeal procedures in such cases to avoid the wasteful deployment of limited High Court judgepower on them;

(v) The dissemination of a greater degree of understanding of the problems facing the Crown Office List, by Annual Reports, a User group, the publication and regular updating of relevant statistics, and other comparable techniques.

ANNEX 1

Nominated Judges: Rates of Grant of Leave (1st January to 31st July 1994)

Table Applications

Oral Applications

Judge	Total	%Grant	%Refuse	%Adjourn	Total	%Grant	%Refuse	%Adjourn
A	55	67	25	8	43	49	33	18
B	108	65	26	9	30	50	47	3
C	27	63	-	37	-	-	-	-
D	26	50	27	23	9	44. 5	44. 5	1
E	55	42	45	13	57	35	47	18
F	84	42	49	5	59	36	54	10
G	51	41	43	16	10	40	60	-
H	30	40	50	10	36	44	53	3
I	45	36	56	8	25	36	40	24
J	19	32	58	10	51	43	47	10
K	67	33	52	15	13	38	54	8
L	23	30	61	9	26	46	46	8
M	20	30	50	20	66	45	45	10
N	46	28	63	9	26	23	58	19
O	19	21	53	26	21	57	24	19
P	20	20	30	50	79	42	45	13
Q	54	19	65	16	72	15	74	11
R	9	11	78	11	56	48	45	7
Others
(i)					17	35	53	12
(ii)	14	21	79	-	10	30	50	20
(iii)	6	66	17	17	10	30	70	-
(iv)	1	-	-	100	16	44	50	6
(v)	-	-	-	-	10	40	50	10
Totals	779				742
Overall %		42%	44%	14%		39%	49%	12%

Note: Entries in smaller print indicate that the judge in question handled less than 30 applications of that particular type during the period.

ANNEX 2

CROWN OFFICE LIST - Caseload as at end July 1994

TOPIC	PART A Pre Leave	Post Leave	PART BI	PART BII	TOTAL
Agriculture & Fisheries	1	4		8	13
Animals	1		1	1	3
Armed Forces			2	2	4
Bail			1		1
Bind over		1			1
Broadcasting	1	2		2	5
Bye-Laws
Caravans and Gypsies				4	4
Committal for trial
Companies
Contempt	1	2			3
Coroners		3	3		6
Costs & Legal Aid	2	5	5	13	25
County Court	2			1	3
Criminal Injuries Compensation Board	2	5	3	15	25
Criminal Law generally	18	32	3	15	68
Crown Court	3				3
Customs & Excise	2	3	1	3	9
Disciplinary Bodies	2	1	1	3	7
Drug Trafficking
EC			2	1	3
Education	8	13		8	29
Elections
Employment	1	4		5	10
Evidence			4		4
Extradition		1	6		7
Family, Children & Young Persons	1	4		10	15
Firearms			1		1
Food & Drugs and Consumer Protection		1	5	3	9
Health & Safety				1	1
Highways				13	13
Housing	18	46	4	84	152
Housing Benefit	4	14		66	84
Immigration	57	61		61	179
Inquiries (Planning)
Jurisdiction (Crown Office)
Land		1		22	23
Licensing	4	1	1	13	19
Local Government	2	2		9	13
Magistrates' Courts Procedure	5	2	4	1	12
Mental Health	I	1		1	3
PACE
Planning Permission, Enforcement Order	10	23			33
Police	3	7		5	15
Pollution				3	3
Prisons	4	6	16	1	27
Public Health	2	8		10	20
Public Order Act
Public Utilities (incl OFTEL etc)				2	2
Rates/Community Charged Council Tax	8	40	7	108	163
Registered Homes		1		2	3
Road Traffic Act	3	1	38		42
Sentencing		1	4		5
Social Security		17		10	27
Solicitors Discipline		5	10	2	17
Sunday Trading, Trade		4	2	11	17
Tax		2		5	7
Terrorism
Town & Country Planning generally	8	24	1	111	144
Trade Descriptions
Transport - Not RTA	1	1		3	5
VAT		1		113	114
Vexatious Litigants