Scts

Sheriff and jury trials in Scotland restarted this week and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service has published a series of advisory videos for jurors, witnesses and professionals participating in trials operating at remote jury centres.

New rules will come into force tomorrow which will make electronic submission of simple procedure cases mandatory. The rule change was approved by the Scottish Civil Justice Council to help deal with the efficient administration of business during the current Covid pandemic. The rule will be in forc

Further plans to recommence Sheriff Court jury trials across Scotland have been announced with arrangements for remote jury centres to be created in ODEON cinema complexes in Ayr, East Kilbride, Dundee and Dunfermline. Contractual arrangements for jury venues in Aberdeen and Inverness are currently

Scotland’s sheriff civil courts are now able to conduct proofs, debates, evidential and fatal accident inquiry (FAI) hearings virtually using the WebEx video platform. The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service has been rolling out WebEx capability since April and it is widely used in the Court

The latest quarterly fines report has been published by the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service and shows that fines collection rates have held strong in spite of the effects of the coronavirus crisis. The new report, which covers the financial years 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20 and 2020/21 Q1 as mea

New cases registered have risen to 78 per cent of the average monthly pre-Covid level, new figures from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service show. The figures show the volumes of cases being progressed each month in the High Court, Sheriff Court and Justice of the Peace Court from April 20

The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) procurement team has been highly commended in the ‘Procurement Team of the Year’ category award at this year’s GO Awards Scotland.

Venues for additional remote jury centres to serve the Sheriffdoms of Glasgow and Strathkelvin and Lothian and Borders have been confirmed. For trials running in Glasgow Sheriff Court, six juries will be based remotely in Glasgow Quay. For trials running initially in Edinburgh Sheriff Court and then

The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) procurement team has been selected as one of the five finalists in the ‘Procurement Team of the Year’ category at GO Awards Scotland. The nomination highlights how the procurement function at SCTS has developed over the last couple of

Lawyers have voiced their opposition to any entrenchment of remote justice following comments from the Lord President that Scotland's legal system will not return to the status quo. Since the lockdown in March, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) has developed new digital court inf

The Scottish Civil Justice Council (SCJC) has approved new rules which will allow the use of Civil Online Procedure claim forms. The change means that from 1 December 2020, if agents or party litigants wish to submit a simple procedure claim this will have to be done through Civil Online.

The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) has announced that its new Application Programming Interface (API) for the Civil Online service is ready for a wider rollout. Civil Online, which was launched in April 2019, is a fully digital service for simple procedure cases, enabling cases to proc

Lawyers in Aberdeen have called for temporary courtrooms to be established to help tackle the increasing backlog of cases caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as sheriff and jury trials have still not resumed. The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) recently announced plans to restart High

Plans to conduct High Court trials using remote jury centres are now underway and the first trials are expected to start at the end of September. Following the recommendation from Lady Dorrian's Restarting Solemn Trials Working Group, the first trials will be based in selected ODEON cinemas and are

Outstanding Sheriff Court summary trials have increased by 28 per to 17,818, the latest figures from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) show. The ninth statistical bulletin from the SCTS contains quarterly figures on activity in all High, Sheriff, Justice of the Peace and criminal