Criminal Practice Directions 2015 Amendment No. 8

The Criminal Procedure Rules and Criminal Practice Directions form a binding code of current criminal practice. The amendment requires robust trial preparation and makes adjournment exceptional, particularly in magistrates’ courts. It gives detailed directions on expert-evidence disclosure, trials in a defendant’s absence, business impact statements, and applications for investigation orders and warrants.

Courts must scrutinise applications for adjournment and intrusive investigative powers carefully. They must balance fairness with expedition, the interests of witnesses and the public, the consequences of delay, and any fault in preparation.

This was the eighth amendment to the Criminal Practice Directions 2015, issued by the Lord Chief Justice on 28 March 2019 and effective from 1 April 2019.

It amended and introduced directions concerning the overriding objective, expert evidence, trial preparation and adjournment in magistrates’ courts, trials in absence in the Crown Court, impact statements for businesses, investigation orders and warrants, and Crown Court listing and allocation.

It was not an appeal or determination of a dispute. It set binding procedural directions for criminal courts and participants.

1. Practice direction issued. The Lord Chief Justice issued the amendment with effect from 1 April 2019. It was not an appellate disposition.

2. The amendment states that the Criminal Procedure Rules and Criminal Practice Directions are a binding code. Courts and participants must know and comply with them and with court directions.

3. Parties introducing expert evidence must disclose known matters capable of undermining the reliability, credibility or impartiality of the expert. The direction gives non-exhaustive examples. It does not require persistent or disproportionate enquiries, but unexplained non-disclosure may lead to searching judicial examination and, where justified, exclusion under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 or the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996.

4. In magistrates’ courts, the starting point is that a listed trial should proceed. Adjournment applications require rigorous scrutiny. The court must assess justice between the parties, expedition, public and defence interests, preparation failures, evidential consequences, the required length of any adjournment, and the effect on other cases.

5. An adult defendant’s trial in a magistrates’ court ordinarily proceeds in absence unless that would be contrary to the interests of justice. In the Crown Court, trial in absence remains a carefully exercised discretion and will very rarely be appropriate where absence results from involuntary illness or incapacity.

6. Business impact statements must be admissible evidence and may inform sentence. Unsupported assumptions about impact are prohibited, and opinions about the sentence to be imposed are irrelevant.

7. Applications for investigative orders and warrants require close scrutiny, candid disclosure, adequate records, and compliance with the prescribed procedures. Crown Court applications must be made at an appropriate centre and may be dealt with without a hearing only where the Rules permit and scrutiny is sufficient.

not stated in the judgment.