Home
Unification of the administration of the summary courts, which deal with 96% of all criminal cases, is an important step in delivering an efficient and effective summary justice system. It will be achieved by giving the Scottish Court Service, an Executive Agency of the Scottish Executive Justice Department, responsibility for the administration of all courts.
Unification will create a single, clearly identifiable agency responsible for the administration of all courts – making it easier for criminal justice agencies to work effectively together.
The benefits of unification are:
- A single set of procedure and a single IT system
- A systems who organisation is more transparent and more accountable
- Increased flexibility in the use of court resources
- Scope to implement improvements in practice quickly and effectively
- Facilitating more effective fine enforcement
It is expected that the Sheriffdom of North Strathclyde will unify in October 2009. It was decided unification should take place at this time to ensure that account would be taken of the experiences and lessons learned from the unification of other Sheriffdoms.
The first step of the unification process was to formulate a planning and implementation team and this team is headed by Jackie Powell (). The purpose of the team is to allow change to be managed effectively, apply the lessons learned from other Sheriffdoms and to implement local initiatives and solutions to fit the needs of individual communities.