Hearings in the Administrative Court outside of London will be conducted in person by default from next week.

The ‘general default position’ for Administrative Court hearings in Wales and on the Midland, Northern, North-Eastern and Western circuits will be that they are in court from next Tuesday, the court’s two senior regional judges announced yesterday.

Mr Justice Fordham, the liaison judge for the Northern and North-Eastern regions, and Mrs Justice Steyn, the liaison judge in Wales and for the Midland and Western circuits, said that parties seeking a remote or hybrid hearing will have to file and serve an application notice with the court.

‘The court retains the ability of its own motion to list a hearing to be heard remotely where appropriate in accordance with the overriding objective,’ they added, giving the example of where a judge in the planning court is ‘not available to hear a 30-minute oral renewal hearing in a particular centre’.

However, the default position for applications to extend interim orders imposed on health or social work professionals is that they will be heard remotely. Where a party wishes such a hearing to be conduct in person, a request may be made by email and will not require a formal application notice, the judges said.

Remote hearings have continued to be held after the end of lockdown, with the lord chief justice recommending in February that Crown court hearings be conducted remotely ‘where it is lawful and in the interests of justice to do so’.

However, a report by the Magistrates’ Association – which found that 76% of magistrates do not want virtual hearings to be used as extensively as they were at the height of the pandemic – warned that remote hearings can have a negative impact on communication and effective participation.

An evaluation conducted by IFF Research and HM Courts & Tribunals Service, which was published in December, also found that remote hearings have had a detrimental impact on the health and wellbeing of legal representatives and judges.

 

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