The Council’s Winter Tour has now finished with nearly 80 people attending sessions held at the sheriff courts in Aberdeen, Inverness and Glasgow.
Presentations, delivered by Council members and lawyers from the Lord President’s Private Office, provided information on court reform and upcoming changes.
The three sessions were attended by solicitors, sheriff officers, in-court advisors, and courts and tribunals staff. Following the presentations, attendees were given the opportunity to ask questions or raise points which will now be considered in the review of the rule changes.
Those who provided feedback described the sessions as “helpful”. Other comments include:
• “really enjoyed the drafting analysis”
• “approach to new rules still to come seems very sensible”
• “I had two main purposes in attending today’s event and both purposes were met. I felt it was a very worthwhile event”.
• “This was a good time of day to hold such an event to enable practitioners to attend”.
• “The content of the speakers’ presentations were very well balanced and covered relevant points without being too detailed or brief for the matter”.
The presentation covered:
• an introduction to the Council and its functions
• an outline of rules already made by the Council under the Courts Reform (Scotland) Act 2014
• the new drafting approach.
There was also discussion on rules still to come, including simple procedure and the Sheriff Appeal Court’s civil function.
The rules discussed, which have already been made as a consequence of the Courts Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, were in relation to:
• judicial review procedure
• exclusive competence
• all-Scotland personal injury court
• transfer and remit of cases
• permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court.
If you would like to read more about the general information covered by the tour, the following summaries are available:
Introduction to Scottish Civil Justice Council 22 September 2015 implementation What next in terms of courts reform?.
If you would like the opportunity to feed into the rules review process, please email comments to
scjc@scotcourts.gov.uk. In particular, the Council is interested in feedback in relation to the practical effect of the rules which came into force on 22 September 2015 and also the approach adopted for the simple procedure rules.