Member

Another advantage of increasing sitting days for sentencing hearings is that, because they are far shorter than trials, a considerable number can be held within the space of a day. Such hearings involve fewer people attending than trials, and there are significant opportunities for using resources more wisely. For example, the CPS routinely sends just one advocate to conduct a series of sentencing hearings at a given court on a given day. There could be much more co-ordination with defence advocates and solicitors to encourage courts to try to arrange for advocates with several pending sentencing hearings in a particular court to have a number of them heard on the same day. I suggest it is well worth an assessment of how far sentencing hearings could be removed from within the cap on sitting days.