Law Weblog

‘Full week’ for Community Payback

Thursday 25 August 2011 at 6:18 am | In News | Post Comment
Convicted offenders given community sentences will do a full week’s work rather than stretch the sentence over a longer period.

Those without jobs will work a minimum of 28 hours over four days, with the fifth day spent looking for full-time work.

Previously, Community Payback programmes – known as community service – could be spread out over 12 months, with some offenders working just six hours a week.

Speaking on a visit to Croydon, south London, Crispen Blunt the prisons minister said the new measures would make for more intensive unpaid work and would help rehabilitate offenders.

“If you are unemployed and on Community Payback you shouldn’t be sitting idle at home watching daytime television or hanging about with your mates on a street corner, you should be out paying back to your community through hard, honest work,”

Currently around 100,000 people are sentenced to Community Payback each year across England and Wales with more than 8.8 million hours of unpaid work completed last year, the Ministry of Justice said.

Crispin Blunt

“You can’t use your phone, there’s a lot of things you can’t do on Community Payback.

Jobseeker’s Allowance Current Rates (per week):
Aged 16-24 £53.45
Aged 25 or over £67.50

London to have global legal centre at the Rolls Building

Monday 22 August 2011 at 8:05 am | In News | Post Comment
The Rolls Building in Fetter Lane, London will house 31 courts, including three ‘super-courts’ designed to accommodate larger disputes. From October it is hoped that the Rolls Building will become the new home of the Chancery Division of the High Court, the Admiralty and Commercial Court, as well as the Technology and Construction Court.

The curvaceous, 11-storey Rolls Building in Fetter Lane is close to the Royal Courts of Justice in central London.

A £300m state-of-the-art law court complex will open in the next few weeks as the government tries to make the UK the world’s pre-eminent destination for swiftly resolving international high-value legal disputes – and making a lot of money in the process.

Spending this amount of money just as the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is closing around 140 magistrates and county courts around the country and preparing to slash the legal aid budget, is bound to anger some.

The Rolls Building courts will also be used for mediation and arbitration cases, both increasingly popular alternatives to the traditional confrontations involved in litigation.

The UK’s legal sector is already a significant earner, generating £23.1bn in 2009 – equivalent to 1.8% of GDP. It contributed £3.2bn in exports, triple the level of a decade ago. Of commercial arbitration cases, 90% of those handled by London law firms involve an international party.

One comment on a legal website feared that electronic filing of cases would not be ready in time.

“The future might look bright to a rabbit staring into the lights of an oncoming car, but it may also get more stressful.”

Prison population – record high

Monday 22 August 2011 at 7:50 am | In News | Post Comment
Figures released Friday showed that the English prison population had hit a record high following the jailing of hundreds of people involved in the country’s recent riots.

Statistics released by the Ministry of Justice showed that the population in England and Wales reached 86,654 — just 1,500 places below operational capacity. About 700 people were added to the prison system in the past week.

A Manchester woman jailed for five months for accepting a pair of shorts that had been looted during the riots has been released in one of the first appeals against tough sentences being handed out by the courts, which have pushed the prison population to a record high.

Ursula Nevin, 24, has been ordered to do 75 hours of unpaid community work after a judge reduced the jail sentence imposed last week, saying it was

“wrong in principle”.

Solicitors – training contract – minimum salary 2011/12

Thursday 4 August 2011 at 7:09 am | In News | Post Comment The minimum salary for trainee solicitors remains the same as last year. For trainee solicitors working in Central London it is £18,590 pa. For trainees working elsewhere in England and Wales, it is £16,650 pa.

 

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