As I approached the end of my second year as national chair of the Magistrates’ Association (MA), I reflect on the first part of my term and look forward to what challenges my last year holds.
When I was bench chair, someone said that you spend the first year working out how things work, the second year making change and your third year looking for your replacement. This is about right for my current role too.
The first year was working with the staff team to change the way the MA functions, its byelaws, the way it engages with members and what we offer them, the delivery of the business plan agreed upon by the board and how the MA presents itself to the outside world. I have established a series of annual meetings with myself and the staff team getting out to meet MA branch chairs where they live.
You will have hopefully noticed the improvements to our members’ magazine, Magistrate – which regularly tops member polls of their favourite member benefit. We also refreshed our website and monthly member newsletter (eNews), and launched MA learn – our exclusive online portal for members which holds 186 learning resources (and we’ve had 4,500 logins to MA learn by members this year alone). Following members’ calls for it, we launched our member support line, staffed by some of our most experienced members, to provide a listening ear and signpost to information and help when members need it. In our recent member survey, seven out of ten members said this was an important member benefit.
My second year has been focused on the way that the head office engages with our branches, the most important way that we have to deliver services to members. We also kept advocating for magistrates at every opportunity, but a hiatus was imposed by the general election in our advocacy work with the government.
As the only collective and independent voice of the magistracy, we have been speaking up for you in the media. Last year, we secured 1,275 pieces of media coverage – an increase of 403 per cent on the year before, and we are now regularly featured on BBC Radio 2 and 4 programmes, Times Radio, LBC and Sky News, and in the main broadsheets. Of course, much press attention focused on the Single Justice Procedure, as well as court delays and most recently the reintroduction of increased sentencing powers in the magistrates’ courts.
I am struck by how slow change to the justice system comes even when everyone says that something needs to be changed, it is sometimes unclear how that change happens.
I am also struck by how much volunteering magistrates do. Yes, 13 days sitting in court is the expectation for all magistrates. However, as you talk to colleagues you realise that many spend time talking to young people through the MA’s Magistrates in the Community initiative. Last year, members visited schools, community centres, mosques, churches, rotary clubs and other places, giving 1,342 presentations, engaging with over 50,000 people, and explaining what the magistracy is all about. Colleagues also sit in family or youth courts which increase their sitting requirements by ten further days each. Magistrates undertake training that is not offset by the minimum sitting requirement. This past year this has amounted to about another two to three days depending on where we are in our judicial lives. Some magistrates are mentors to new magistrates or appraisers of existing colleagues – all more hours spent supporting the court system. Members organise educational events for colleagues, or social events so that magistrates can get together.
I have pressed for better recognition of magistrates within the national honours system, and I hope this will follow through with more magistrates nominated. We have a fantastic video on MA learn, explaining how to nominate a fellow magistrate for a national honour – so if you know someone who deserves that recognition, please take a look.
A record number of new, younger, magistrates are joining us through the significant recruitment campaign, which we support and have long advocated for. This is putting pressure on local benches to supply appropriate support, through mentors and appraisers. I am asking for a more detailed planning process so that every part of the system is ready for new starters.
So, what does the next year hold? A new government has meant a series of meetings with new ministers and opposition leaders. Unfortunately, for the first time, no sitting MP has served as a magistrate, and I am thinking of how we might educate and inform members of the House of Commons about the vital work that members do for society. We will keep focusing on the issues that members tell us are the most important for them: the state of the justice system and our call for a long-term recovery plan, reform of magistrates’ expenses so they are not out of pocket and subsidising the justice system, ensuring that any reforms to local justice areas preserve local justice and keep the principle of local magistrate leaders being chosen by local magistrates, pressing for reforms to the Single Justice Procedure to protect the most vulnerable defendants, and pressing for family magistrates to be allocated public law cases as well as private law.
My last annual general meeting in November 2025 seems a long while away, but when I get there, I will have left the MA in a better position.
Come back in a year and see how it went.
Photo credit: © Ian Stratton
