A recruitment campaign to ensure that there are enough magistrates to fill the benches has been launched by the Department for Constitutional Affairs. The turnover of magistrates averages about 1500 per year, but it is planned to increase this to 2,500 so that the annual workload of 1.2 million offences can be dealt with speedily.The Department will work with 90 local Magistrates Advisory Committees in England and Wales in a 4 million pounds three-year co-ordinated regional recruitment campaign. This will include a free-phone hotline 0800 003007, bus, radio and media adverts, and leaflets. The campaign will target younger people, ethnic minorities in cities where they are under-represented and people with disabilities. Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor said: “One of the main difficulties in recruiting from minority ethnic communities lies in the generally held, but erroneous view, that to become a magistrate you have to be white, middle class, middle-age and professional. This is a preconception which we have to challenge.”
The Local Government Association is leading a project that will pull together organisations and best practice across the country to respond to the growing problem of domestic violence. The project, which will be funded for three years by the Home Office, will develop a more integrated and coherent system for dealing with incidents of domestic violence by bringing together the police, criminal justice agencies and voluntary bodies.Richard Grant, chair of the LGA’s Community Safety Panel, said: “Domestic violence is a crime which affects people from all walks of life and too often goes unreported and unpunished. A range of agencies including local authorities and the police deal with the problem and locally they have developed innovative and effective ways of working. This project is focused on co-ordinating that work and sharing good ideas nationally to deliver a more consistent approach. It is essential that key council services such as education, housing and social services co-ordinate their work effectively to deal with the effects of domestic violence.”
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The Neighbourhood Renewal Unit is drawing up a qualifications framework to meet the development needs of all those involved in neighbourhood renewal. The framework will set out standards which will be the basis for giving credit and recognition to people involved in neighbourhood renewal. The standards will be designed so as to offer qualifications at a number of levels.The first stage is to devise a map of the functions that people carry out on a day to day basis as part of their involvement in renewal work. The functional map is a structured way of describing the functions of neighbourhood renewal, starting from a ‘mission statement’ and then breaking it down into smaller functional areas ranging from strategic management to tackling crime. The draft functional map is based on an analysis of a range of job descriptions for national regional and local posts. The Neighbourhood Renewal Unit wants comments on the draft.
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