From this week, the public and legal professionals can view magistrates’ court listings online on Courtserve.
Courtserve will provide an additional method for the public to find out where, when and how magistrates’ court cases are taking place, bringing magistrates’ courts in line with other jurisdictions. Open justice remains a fundamental principle of the courts and tribunals operation and this change supports transparency.
Courts will still display the lists in their buildings and provide courts lists to the media and court professionals. Instead it provides an additional method for the public to find out where, when and how magistrates’ court cases are taking place.
The published lists will contain the same information as the lists currently displayed in our court buildings. This includes: the defendant’s full name, who brought the prosecution (i.e. police), courtroom, time listed and case number.
Access the lists and publication frequency
The lists can be accessed for free on Courtserve. New users will be required to register but for existing users, the lists can be accessed immediately.
Lists will be published at the end of each day and will be available for one day. Mondays’ lists (and Saturdays’ where applicable) will be published on Fridays.
Exceptions to publishing
Due to sensitivity, cases involving children (youth cases) will not be published. This applies to both youth courts lists but also youth cases listed in adult court. Overnight custody cases (remand hearings), are unable to be published as they are not known at the time of publishing the public list. To find out whether youth or overnight cases are taking place, the public can contact the court directly.
Single Justice Procedure lists are already published online.
If a list for a specific court is not published, this might be because there are no sittings, you may, in that case, wish to contact the court to confirm. If you have questions about any of the listed cases you need to contact the relevant court direct.
Reporting restrictions
Cases listed on the published list may be subject to reporting restrictions. Reporting restrictions may be imposed by the court at any time and it is an individual’s responsibility to comply with the restrictions. You can confirm whether a reporting restriction is in place by contacting the relevant court.
