Habeas corpus applications – availability of court registrars
Practitioners have expressed concern that, while the Courts Service has put in place an ‘on-call’ rota for High Court registrars at weekends (that is, Friday evenings to Sunday evenings), a similar system has not been put in place to provide cover on weekday evenings.
The Society’s Criminal Law Committee has been in correspondence with the Courts Service and the President of the High Court on the point. In order to ensure that the occurrence of instances where cover is unavailable is recorded, the committee advises that practitioners who experience difficulties regarding the non-availability of registrars during weekday evenings should write directly to the Courts Service and copy same to the Criminal Law Committee, when such difficulties arise.