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Crown Court

Page history last edited by Anneli Sarkanen 3 years, 6 months ago

Details from past experience for ordering copies of judgments from Crown Court:

You have to email the Court and attach (or fax) a formal letter requesting the judgment and your reasons (something along the lines of 'legal research relating to a case we are dealing with' seem to be sufficient). You might want to telephone the court first to get the correct contact information of who to send the request. Permission from a judge is (usually?) required to obtain a transcript.
Once the request for transcription is granted and request passed to transcribers, timescales and costs seem to vary - an average quote could be £300-400 but could rise to as much as £2,000 if you have the whole hearing transcribed. Could take a couple of weeks - but times vary with length of judgment and waiting for approval from the judge.
Note that for older cases, older than 5 years, the tapes will have been destroyed (due to space and cost restrictions) so there will be no possibility of getting a transcript, unless it was transcribed at the time.
*If anyone wants to share their experiences of obtaining transcripts, please do add a comment below.*

Online judgments

For some cases, sentencing remarks are published on the Judiciary website (use Filters on right to narrow down to Crown Court) - assume these are cases with a wide public interest so not all CC judgments/sentencing remarks will be on here. If the cases are missing from this site, try the Miscellaneous section of BAILII.

Inner Temple Library has a useful guide to obtaining transcripts. It was updated in 2017 and available as a priced PDF.

Transcription companies

HMCTS has introduced changes to provision of transcription services between June and August 2017 - choice of transcription provider will be based on type of service required rather than jurisdiction in which the hearing took place: Off-site transcription (OTS) for transcripts of hearings that have been recorded; Real-Time Transcription service (RTS) for transcribing in real time; Attendance based transcription service (ATS) for provision of a stenographer in court to make record of proceedings as they happen. For more information, see EX107 and associated Guidance Notes: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/order-a-transcript-of-court-or-tribunal-proceedings-form-ex107

Hearing/listing information

CourtServe and Xhibit.justice.gov.uk has details of hearings in Crown Court on a daily basis. TheLawPages has historical crown court lists (free registration required).

Extempore notes

You may find a story in the local press about the case by doing a press search (Nexis, Newsroom etc). This will rarely result in an official judgment but may contain some useful information or facts about the case.