B was appointed by NMCC as ‘Chief Executive to the MCC’.
Held: He was not to be ’employed in assisting’ a JC within the meaning of the Regulations. On appointment as Chief Executive, B ceased to be a JC, and became an employee of the Committee, with an extensive written job description. Hutchison J accepted the submission that the object of the post must be to provide assistance and that this almost inevitably means that the person concerned must be a subordinate. It could not ’embrace a person holding the post which Mr Bowden held on the relevant date’. Compensation was payable for the loss of job for subordinate officers within the magistrates courts only, including clerks and their assistants, but not for committee chairmen. The definition in the Regulations clearly referred to assistants.
Hutchison J explained the background to the Regulations: ‘Justices for each petty sessional division or borough used to appoint their own clerks who held office during the pleasure of the justices, being liable to dismissal at any time. However, the Justices of the Peace Act 1949 created Magistrates’ Courts Committees with administrative responsibility for maintaining an adequate and efficient service of magistrates’ courts, and vested in those committees (amongst other duties) that of appointing justices’ clerks who thereafter held office during the pleasure of the Committee, subject to certain limitations in the exercise of their powers of dismissal.
The Act also provided (Schedule 4 paragraphs 9(1) and (2)) for the committee to appoint a clerk to the committee and such other officers if any as the Secretary of State might approve; and laid down that, where there was a separate committee for a borough or a county not divided into petty sessional divisions, the clerk to the borough or county justices should, by virtue of his office, be clerk to the committee. The Act made provision for the employment of any staff provided for the justices’ clerk. It also, by section 17, imposed on the committee an obligation in relation to training of justices, the carrying out of which in practice fell largely on the clerk to the committee.
There have, of course, been other statutory provisions since the 1949 Act: but the importance of the latter is that, as from that date, the responsibility for appointment of justices’ clerks fell on the newly created Magistrates’ Courts Committees. The clerk to the committee was either the justices’ clerk, whom they appointed but whom they did not employ; other staff whom they did employ; and those categories of officers approved by the Secretary of State, who had given general approval to the appointment, where desired by the committee, of an officer of the local authority as financial adviser or as architect to the committee.’
Judges:
Hutchison J
Citations:
Times 16-Feb-1993
Statutes:
Justices of The Peace Act 1949 (Compensation) Regulations 1978 (1978 No 1682)
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Secretary of State for Justice v Slee CA 24-Jan-2011
The claimant had been found to have been unfailry dismissed by respondent, on the termination of her employment as an assistant Clerk to the Justices. The EAT had upheld her claim, but had at first rejected her claim for long-term and retirement . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment, Magistrates
Updated: 05 May 2022; Ref: scu.78515