The judiciary is in danger of becoming overly reliant on part-time judges due to recruitment difficulties, the lord chief justice has warned.

Delivering the annual Mansion House speech last night, Lord Burnett of Maldon praised those who helped reverse the ‘damaging changes’ to judicial pension arrangements announced in 2012 but said more needed to be done to recruit salaried judges.

The lord chief said the Judicial Appointments Commission was struggling to fill vacancies for salaried roles. The district bench was operating ‘well below complement’ and the last two circuit judge competitions failed to deliver all the judges needed to tackle the court backlog.

‘One reason, which I hear from judges all over the country, is that as salaried judicial office has become more onerous, fee-paid office, sometimes combining a number of fee-paid offices, has become more attractive. There is truth in that observation. It is the salaried judges who do the more difficult work, the urgent work and, as we all know, additional out-of-court work,’ the lord chief said.

Lord chief justice, Lord Burnett of Maldon

Lord Burnett of Maldon is to review terms and conditions after being told salaried office has become more onerous

Source: Alamy

‘This now needs to be addressed. Salaried judges and fee-paid judges are different. A salaried judge is a judge for all purposes and subject to strict constraints on any other activity. Maintaining a strong cadre of judges who make this career commitment enhances the independence of the judiciary as a whole. Fee-paid judges, by contrast, are something else first and part-time judges second.’

Fee-paid judges help to manage variable workloads and enable lawyers to see if they like judging, the lord chief acknowledged. ‘The pressure of business following the pandemic coupled with a shortage of judges in some jurisdictions has made us more reliant on fee-paid judges, particularly recorders and deputy district judges. But we will need to restore the balance when we can,’ he said.

The aim is to have a ‘significant difference’ between the minimum time between a salaried part-time judge can sit and the maximum time a fee-paid judge can sit. Terms and conditions will be reviewed to ensure they do not ‘positively benefit’ fee-paid judges at the expense of their salaried colleagues.

Responding to a justice committee report on court capacity today, the government said a healthy fee-paid pool was key to meeting the need for salaried roles. Since 2017, the number of fee-paid judges in court has increased by 12% and the cadre of deputy district judges is 27% larger.

However, the government also acknowledged that recruiting sufficient salaried judges had been challenging. Steps to address the challenges include a 17% uplift in remuneration for district judges and 20% for circuit judges. The sitting experience required for those applying to be a district judge has been halved.

 

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