& so as foreshadowed in this blog it came to pass, county courts RIP

The CPR is to be amended, probably from 21st April, to reflect the abolition of the county courts and replacement by one single national County Court.


4. In the Rules and in CCR Order 27—

(a)unless amended elsewhere in these rules —

(i)for “a county court”, in each place it occurs, substitute “the County Court”;

(ii)for “county court”, in each place it occurs, substitute “County Court”;

(iii)for “county courts”, in each place it occurs, substitute “the County Court”; and

(iv)for “district judge”, in each place it occurs, substitute “District Judge”;

What we used to call and attend as county courts - i.e. the buildings will now be called County Court Hearing Centres.  Another small innovation is that district and circuit judges are being capitalised in the new legislative arrangements:

1) Subject to paragraph 2), in each practice direction— 

a) for “a county court”, in each place it occurs, substitute “the County Court”; 

b) for “any county court”, in each place it occurs, substitute “the County Court”;  5

c) for “county court”, in each place it occurs, substitute “County Court”;

d) for “county courts”, in each place it occurs, substitute “the County Court”; 

e) for “circuit judge”, in each place it occurs, substitute “Circuit Judge”; 

f) for “Circuit judge”, in each place it occurs, substitute “Circuit Judge”; 

g) for “designated civil judge”, in each place it occurs, substitute “Designated 

Civil Judge”; 

h) for “district judge”, in each place it occurs, substitute “District Judge”; 

i) for “master”, in each place it occurs, substitute “Master”; and 

j) for “the county courts”, in each place it occurs, substitute “the County Court”. 

Well bye bye county courts........and in particular my favourite and the oldest civil court in the world, the Crime and Courts Act 2013 repeals the following:

(2) For the purpose of establishing a court to exercise so much of the jurisdiction previously exercised by the Mayor's and City of London Court as is appropriate to a county court and for exercising any other jurisdiction which may hereafter be conferred on a county court, the City of London shall, by virtue of this section, become a county court district and accordingly the enactments relating to county courts shall apply in relation to the county court for the City of London as they apply in relation to a county court for any other county court district.

(3) Without prejudice to subsection (1) above, the county court for the district constituted by subsection (2) above shall be known as the Mayor's and City of London Court and the Circuit judge assigned to that district under section 20(1) of this Act shall be known as the judge of the Mayor's and City of London Court.

But curiously not this:

The courthouse and accommodation which up to the appointed day have been respectively known as the Central Criminal Court and the Mayor's and City of London Court shall continue to be known by those names, and it shall be the duty of the Common Council of the City of London (in this section referred to as “the Common Council”) to continue to make the said premises available for use for the sittings and business of those courts respectively.

Not sure what all that means?