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The Magistrate's Blog (2005-2012)

This blog has migrated to www.magistratesblog.blogspot.co.uk This blog is anonymous, and Bystander's views are his and his alone. Where his views differ from the letter of the law, he will enforce the letter of the law because that is what he has sworn to do. If you think that you can identify a particular case from one of the posts you are wrong. Enough facts are changed to preserve the truth of the tale but to disguise its exact source.

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Location: Near London, United Kingdom

The blog is written by a retired JP, with over 30 years' experience on the Bench.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Crombie Straitjacket

Part of the incessant drive to reform courts' administration is to rationalise the number of Justices' Clerks. These office-holders are the rump of a fine cadre of professionals who used to act as court managers and as advisers to magistrates. After successive thinning-out exercises about 70-something JCs remain, and there are plans to reduce their number still further to just over 50. Unfortunately there is a Civil Service agreement called Crombie, named, I suspect, after the person who was unwise enough to sign it, that provides for enormous levels of compensation for JCs and their deputies who find their posts abolished. A judge described it to me as one of the most expensive mistakes ever made by a civil servant. Let's see how HM Courts' Service gets round that one.

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