8.1
Key findings
The most significant cost factors were the costs of employing District Judges (particularly when compared to magistrates, who can only claim expenses, a contribution to lost earnings and other small sums). Premises costs were also a major factor in determining specific case costs, but not relative costs (between magistrates and District Judges).
Overall, the costs associated with District Judges’ salaries were not typically compensated for by the savings from the relative speed with which theytransacted business. However, the evidence suggests that for “either way” cases District Judges were less costly (in terms of magistrates’ court processing costs) when either lawyer or CPS costs were included or when volunteering costs were included for magistrates.
Although findings from the qualitative interviewers suggested that more staff time is currently spent supporting magistrates than District Judges, these costs could not be measured and are therefore not factored into the cost model. Similarly, although District Judges were perceived to be particularly adept at casemanagement, no specific case management hearings were observed as part of the research. Therefore, any perceived time savings regarding these hearings could not be taken into account. In addition, disposal costs are also excluded from the model and as is detailed in Chapter 10, the evidence suggests that District Judges are more likely to use more expensive custodial sentences.
8.2
Key outputs from cost model
This element of the research focused on the costs associated with cases being heard in the magistrates’ courts, noting the differences between those heard by a bench of magistrates and those heard by District Judges. An interactive cost model was developed to examine these costs and assess the implications of any changes to the current deployment of
magistrates and District Judges across different case types. The cost model considered both the resources allocated to courts and their financial costs, including costs attributable to each judiciary type. This produced a cost per hour figure for six resource categories.
These cost per hour figures, based on available 2008–9 financial data, were then applied to the average time taken by each judiciary type to dispose of various types of cases (defined by case category, as outlined in the previous chapter), giving an overall “case cost”.
An underlying assumption of this approach was that the longer a case took to conclude, the greater the cost would be. The six categories of resources were as follows:59
Costs directly associated with magistrates: These included claims for loss of earnings, recruitment, expenses, training, and advisory committee costs (which includes staff time for supporting magistrates’ meetings). These costs totalled £26.80 per hour for a bench of three magistrates. In addition, a “volunteer” cost could also be applied. This was the cost to the wider economy as a result of magistrates volunteering, and reflects the “value” of their unpaid time. A figure of £10 per magistrate per hour was attributed by taking average UK earnings in 2009 (as opposed to the minimum wage, given that employed magistrates tend to work in higher-paid occupations) (ONS, 2009).60 This follows an approach used in a number of other studies – more information is provided in the technical report. It should be noted that this value is a proxy figure, given that we do not have data on the occupations and earnings of all magistrates. Adding in volunteer costs gave a figure of £56.80 as the hourly cost of a bench of three magistrates. The cost model can be run with or without the inclusion of these volunteer costs, producing two separate outputs. Some of the views expressed in the interviews suggest that HMCS staff spend more time supporting and organising benches of magistrates than they do District Judges. However as this research did not calculate this cost via the observations, it could not be systematically factored into the cost model.
Costs directly associated with District Judges: These included employment, recruitment, expenses, training and equipment.61 If these costs were apportioned over all the days (215) for which District Judges are contracted each year, hourly costs totalled £148.32. Excluding training, sickness and work for the JSB and JAC gave “sitting days” comparable with the figures used for magistrates, and an average hourly cost of £162.16. This is the standard figure used in the model.
59
The proposal to include disposal costs was considered but later withdrawn on technical grounds (i.e. that it would be too difficult to identify similar cases where the same sentence would be expected). Furthermore, others (including Lord Justice Auld) have noted that similar crimes should attract similar sentences, irrespective of who hears the case. Therefore, it should be noted that any differential in these costs, for example, District Judges’ higher propensity to impose custodial sentences (see Chapter 10) are not factored into the model. In this example, the costs of District Judges would likely be higher given the relative costs of custodial sentences.
60
If required, the volunteering cost (of £10 per hour) can be amended within the computer-based model.
61
The model assumed that all costs are allocated to the time spent by District Judges when they are sitting on court cases, tribunals, adjudications and other sittings. This is to ensure consistency with the ways in which other resource costs have been calculated. It was suggested that a number of other duties can be regarded as “court-related”, although sickness, absence, training and most administrative work would still not be included. If these additional duties were included in totals of sitting hours, the hourly costs for District Judges would be reduced somewhat. The effect would not be great, however, as District Judges already spend almost 90% of the days they work hearing court cases, on tribunals, adjudications or on other sittings.
Premises costs: These were calculated by assigning all of the identified costs for running court room buildings to the court room space within these buildings, then allocating these costs across the time periods during which court rooms were used. An average was then taken across the sampled areas.62 The resulting figure (cost per court room hour used) was calculated at £111.43 per hour overall, but varied greatly across courts, from £33.24
(Gloucester) to £365.83 (Hereford).63 This variation appears to be due to a number of factors, some of them specific to individual courts, others to more general patterns (e.g. private finance initiative (PFI) schemes). When comparing relatively low and high premises costs, the model showed how the faster pace of District Judges makes their cost position (relative to magistrates) increasingly favourable as premises costs rise.64 Although there are local differences in the floor space allocated to magistrates and District Judges, overall there were no consistent patterns and therefore no differentiation has been factored into the current analysis.
Clerks and support staff costs: Information from the 44 courts involved in the research revealed that Legal Advisers present within the court room were almost always “Tier 2” grade, costing an average of £31.54 per hour. In addition, it is important to consider the recent HMCTS decision to expand the use of court associates (as opposed to Legal Advisers), who provide administrative support to District Judges for certain cases at an average cost of £13.56 per hour. With this in mind, two versions of the model were developed: one including Legal Adviser costs and the other including costs for court associates. It should also be noted that Legal Advisers and other support staff may spend time supporting the judiciary outside of the court room, in particular magistrates. However, such costs could not be factored into the cost model (given the lack of a quantitative measure). The costs of recruiting, training and supporting Legal Advisers and court associates were assumed to be similar and have not been included in the model.
62
44 sampled locations. This approach was adopted because areas with relatively high numbers of court rooms are over-represented in the sample and some of the areas with larger numbers of court rooms are among the less costly – although patterns here are complex. An alternative would be to take an average across all court rooms in the sample (i.e. 380), which gives a slightly lower figure of £107.31 per court room hour.
63
Hereford is something of an outlier: the next four most expensive locations (per court room hour) are Highbury Corner (£192.31); Worcester (£183.47); Manchester (£181.46) and Liskeard (£179.48). Further details can be found in the “cost model”.
64
This is apparent when comparing Manchester as a “high cost” court (£181.46) and Newcastle as a “low cost” court (£46.76). In Newcastle, instances of magistrates’ costs being higher than District Judges’ were rare – restricted to the longest (upper quartile) “either way” cases, and only if volunteer costs for magistrates were included. In Manchester, the greater speed of District Judges (who therefore spent less time in the expensive premises) meant that many categories of their cases cost less. Notable were median figures for all summary non-motoring and “either way” cases, even excluding volunteer costs.
Police and other staff costs: These total £20.00 per hour for police, £32.00 for lawyers and £26.00 for legal aid. Although the cost of police, probation staff, lawyers and other staff may be seen as an important consideration, the observation data indicated that their presence in court was either rare or randomly distributed (police), or highly case-dependent. Costs for lawyers and legal aid (but not police, following the point about random attendance made above) are included in Table 8.1, although it does have to be borne in mind that these costs are not evenly applied to different cases in the way that, say, premises costs are.
These costs were then applied to the following formula to produce the overall “case costs”:
Case cost
(DJ or Magistrates) =
(Hourly DJ or 3 X Magistrate cost + Hourly Premises cost + Hourly Clerk / Legal Adviser
cost + Hourly cost of other staff)
x
Time the case lasts
(in hours)
Case timings
Focusing upon the next element of the formula, the data showed that most cases observed were conducted within 20 minutes, although a few took up to two hours. Based on both the overall and matched samples, District Judges tended to transact business more quickly than a bench of magistrates.65 That said, there was less of a difference between the two for “shorter” cases.
In order to ensure the cost model compared the cost of magistrates and District Judges fairly, (i.e. compared them presiding over similar work), case timings were incorporated from the regression analysis – based on 879 cases. Relevant resource costs (in £ per hour) were then applied to these timings to obtain an overall “case cost”.
Costs for adult cases
Table 8.1 gives cost per case figures, for processing a case in the magistrates’ court, when heard by District Judges and a bench of three magistrates. Upper (UQ) and lower quartile (LQ) figures are given to reflect some of the complexity in the overall distribution of case timings (UQ and LQ figures give the boundaries beyond which lie the 25% of cases taking the longest and shortest times to hear, respectively).
Patterns varied by case categories. For “either way” cases cost differentials were less distinct, with District Judges being cheaper where volunteering costs were included for magistrates.
It is also evident that there are differences between mean and median costs in many cases. In terms of the median costs for all cases, District Judges costs are generally lower than magistrates. The upper and lower quartile figures reveal that costs range more widely for District Judges, with lower quartiles likely to be significantly lower than for magistrates.
It is also evident that case costs could be highly sensitive to the assumptions that were made. For example, if we took District Judge costs with Legal Advisers (the present position) and excluded volunteer costs, magistrates consistently showed lower overall case costs. If volunteer costs were included, magistrates’ costs for several categories were similar to or higher than District Judges.
65
Measured by taking the median case length for both, i.e. the midpoint of the case times arranged in order of value.
Table 8.1: Derived costs per case, excluding police and other staff costs Base: 786 cases (or 879 cases for analysis across all case types)
Case Category Type Mean Cost (£) Median Cost (£) LQ Cost (£) UQ Cost (£)
District Judge with LA 75 56 46 104
District Judge with CA 71 53 43 98
Magistrates with vol 75 63 56 93
Summary non- motoring
Magistrates w/o vol 69 58 52 85
District Judge with LA 56 37 26 85
District Judge with CA 53 35 25 80
Magistrates w vol 54 42 36 72
Summary motoring
Magistrates w/o vol 50 39 33 66
District Judge with LA 75 57 46 104
District Judge with CA 71 54 44 99
Magistrates w vol 79 67 60 97
“Either way”
Magistrates w/o vol 72 61 55 89
District Judge with LA 51 32 21 79
District Judge with CA 48 30 20 75
Magistrates w vol 48 36 29 66
Sent-to-crown
Magistrates w/o vol 44 33 27 60
District Judge with LA 77 42 26 79
District Judge with CA 73 40 25 75
Magistrates w vol 70 48 38 71
All cases
Magistrates w/o vol 64 44 35 65
Vol = volunteering cost, LA = Legal Adviser, CA = court associate
Table 8.2: Derived costs per case, including police and other staff costs Base: 786 cases (or 879 cases for analysis across all case types)
Case Type Type Mean Cost
(£)