Virtual Court

We are now consulting over the amendments to the Unified Contract and Crime Specification necessary to support the national Virtual Court pilot, which will commence in 2009 and run for 12 months. The pilot is being led by the Office of Criminal Justice Reform, but involves all agencies in the criminal justice system.

The LSC's role is to ensure that those defendants who choose to participate in the Virtual Court process have access to legal advice and representation throughout. The LSC therefore proposes to introduce the Virtual Court Fixed Fee. This will be delivered through a type of legal aid known as Advocacy Assistance. This is a non-means tested form of legal aid, which will be limited to just the Virtual Court hearing. The LSC considers that this supports the efficiency of the Virtual Court process whilst providing the widest cover possible for the participants.

From the ‘links' box on the top right of this page you can find a copy of the consultation paper and be directed to the response section of this site.

You can respond to this consultation using our easy-to-use online questionnaire.

Once submitted you will not be able to amend your response, but you will be able to view it when you next log in (under 'My responses').

If you do not wish to respond online there is also provision to download an ‘offline' template onto your own computer, and then email it back to us, or if necessary, print it out, fill it in and return by post.

This consultation has now closed. Thank you to those who responded.

The LSC's post-consultation response will be published after we have completed the analysis of responses.