Virtual courts

Report: 12
Date: 17 July 2008
By: Assistant Commissioner Territorial Policing on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

This report requests MPA approval to spend £1.003M capital and £2.621M revenue from money already allocated in the current seven year Capital Plan and DOI revenue to support the capital programme. This is to allow Virtual Courts to function as a pilot in up to15 custody sites across nine London boroughs sending their cases into one first hearing court centre. The costs would cover the purchase, installation and support of video conferencing and collaboration space equipment and networks.

The Virtual Courts Pilot is recognised by Government and Sir Ronnie Flanagan as having considerable potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the criminal justice system.

 This report outlines significant non-cashable benefits to the MPS in terms of efficiency savings and, in addition, shows the commitment to find cashable savings of £1.3m from 2011/2012 onwards. Both cashable and non-cashable benefits from the full roll out will be identified during the pilot.

A. Recommendations

1. Agree up to 15 pilot sites for virtual courts.

2. Agree capital expenditure of £1.479m, offset by £0.476m from the Office of Criminal Justice Reform (OCJR) business continuity fund and revenue expenditure of £2.62M.

3. Agree that any funding not spent in 2008/09 can be carried over to 2009/10, as a reserve, to cover the spending profile as shown in table 3 below.

B. Supporting information

1. During 2007 the London Criminal Justice Board (LCJB) with the MPS successfully developed and operated the Virtual Court prototype.

2 The prototype identified the potential to considerably improve efficiency in a number of areas. These include;

• Serving the interests of justice though a more efficient process,
• Reduction in prisoner movements,
• Reduction in paperwork,
• Reduction in the number of bail to return cases,
• Reduction in the number of defendants who fail to appear at first hearing
• Improved use of cell capacity

3 The prototype also demonstrated improvements in effectiveness, namely:

• Arrest to first hearing within hours rather than days and
• Electronic case paper movements within minutes rather than days.

4 Office for Criminal Justice Reform (OCJR) now lead the project. OCJR successfully submitted a business case to the National Criminal Justice Business Change Board proposing a national pilot to be conducted by London, Kent and Devon & Cornwall.

5 The National Outline Business Case requests on behalf of all agencies funding of £6.75M over two years to support the pilot.

6 Funding protocols have been agreed by a national Funding Advisory Board which included MPS representation.

Strategic Overview

7 This pilot is viewed by Government and the collaborating agencies as being of considerable significance in delivering major benefits to the efficiency and effectiveness of the criminal justice system.

8 The prototype demonstrated the potential to

• Speed up the criminal justice process
• Reduce the cost of the criminal justice system
• Eradicate inefficiencies within the criminal justice system

9 Successful implementation supports the MPS Service Improvement Programme (SIP), particularly reduced re-keying and reduced bureaucracy.

10 Sir Ronnie Flanagan in his interim report of the Independent Review of Policing recommended Virtual Courts. “Following completion of the pilot evaluation, urgent consideration should be given to rolling out virtual courts, both geographically and in terms of the categories of cases they can cover.” (Recommendation 22)

11 The project supports the overall criminal justice reform programme for London led by the LCJB. Thus it supports the LCJB strategic vision which the MPS shares by addressing the strategic priorities of:

• More modern and efficient justice process delivered through increased inter-agency working.
• Greater public confidence demonstrating that justice is being done quickly.
• The project makes a significant contribution to the delivery of Criminal Justice Simple, Speedy, Summary (CJSSS) in the Magistrates’ Courts.
• Offers the potential for a more proportionate approach to dealing with crime effectively and dispenses justice on the first occasion possible.

12 As a result of the prototype the Government commissioned the Legal Services Commission (LSC) to identify a package to offer to defence solicitors as an incentive for representing virtual court cases and to review legislative changes to remove the need for consent.

Benefits

13 The MPS has identified the potential for significant cashable and non-cashable benefits should there follow full roll-out to all BOCUs. They relate to efficiency and improved service and can be summarised as follows:

• Cell space: Increased cell availability means a. fewer prisoners will be kept in overnight for court in the morning, b. reduces need to transport arrestees to other accommodation when cells are full. This may reduce the need for growth in the numbers of cells needed by the MPS, a consequence of which could be a reduced requirement for capital investment in custody centres.
• Collaborative Space: this technology will mean less photocopying and fewer mislaid case papers or advance information. This also means less case papers to transport via courier.
• Failure to appear: Fewer “Fail to Appear” warrants for officers to deal with due to the expedited handling of CJ cases.
• Statutory charging: Improved charging advice at police stations. This will reduce the numbers needing to be bailed to return to police stations thereby alleviating pressure on custody suites.
• Efficiency: First hearings within 3 hours of charge rather than up to 14 days.

14 However, the accurate identification of the full cashable and non cashable benefits will require a structured pilot as proposed in this paper.

C. Race and equality impact

1. The Virtual Courts prototype was carried out for 12 weeks over the summer of 2007. A cross agency Equalities Impact Assessment (EIA) was completed on behalf of the London Criminal Justice Board. This is available as a separate document, Appendix 1 which is available on the MPA website. A copy has been placed in the Members Room.

2. A separate EIA will be completed at the conclusion of the pilot.

3. The MPS Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate has been consulted over the EIA and will be involved during the pilot.

D. Financial implications

Capital

1. The capital costs associated with the implementation of the pilot sites within the MPS is given below:

Table 1: Capital Implications of Virtual courts pilot

2. The MPS has already included £3.2m within the current seven-year capital plan. The reason why the amount has changed, is that the proposed central service provision is now being provided as a managed service and therefore falls under revenue costs. However there will be additional capital costs associated with a full rollout if the pilot is successful, but this figure has not been included within the London business case. It is anticipated that this will be below the current capital allocated for this project.

3. A bid has been made for the additional MPS capital costs of the project to be funded from within the OCJR Business Change Fund, but this has not yet been agreed

Revenue

4. The total revenue cost of implementing the pilot is £5.84m of which £0.93m is central project costs, which will be funded by the OCJR. The remaining £4.91m will be funded between all of the agencies involved in the project, based on the proportion of the total benefits, cashable and non-cashable that will be achieved by each organisation. The total MPS contribution as identified in the OCJR business case is identified below:

Table 2: Revenue implications of Virtual courts pilot

5. The funding for the MPS proportion of revenue costs has been provided for within the 2008/09 DOI revenue to support the capital programme (£3m). Consideration will need to be given to carrying forward any under-spend against this budget to ensure that the full revenue costs in both years can be met from this budget.

6. The costs above assume that the pilots will commence in December 2008. However this could change, depending on a number of issues including the procurement process, and this may change the distribution of costs between 2008/09 and 2009/10.

7. As the pilot will be undertaken using existing MPS staff, there will be no additional staffing costs for the duration of the pilot. However, the level of staffing resource requirement will be evaluated during the pilot and any additional resource requirement will need to be identified and costed before agreement to full rollout.

8. The costs included in the OCJR business case include VAT. It may be that VAT is recoverable by the OCJR, and therefore decrease the costs apportioned to the MPS, but this is still being reviewed.

9. As stated above, costs have been apportioned according to the benefits achieved (MPS benefits are all non-cashable, as identified in the benefits analysis below), but there is some concern that other organisations are not showing the full benefits that could be achieved. It has been agreed that these will be reviewed during the pilot and therefore taken into account before any apportionment of costs if full rollout goes ahead. Investment Board has now agreed to find £1.3m cashable savings from 2011/12 onwards assuming a full roll out of Virtual Courts to all BOCUs.

10. There is also a financial risk to the MPS if the other police forces included in the pilot (Devon and Cornwall and Kent) decide not to go ahead with the pilot. If this were the case, the additional cost to the MPS would be in the region of £167k. This has been raised with the central project team that the MPS should not bear any increased cost as a result of this.

11. As the project is being managed by the OCJR and they will be undertaking the procurement of the capital items, there is a dependency on the MPS agreeing to the commitment of resources, both capital and revenue, as stated above. It should also be noted that the above costs are based on the best estimates available at this time.

12. The revenue running costs of the pilot have been included in the revenue costings above, but only cover the pilot time-frame. It has been estimated that with a full rollout the revenue running costs, excluding any additional staffing requirements are likely to be in the region of £1m, but this figure can only be estimated at this stage and will need to be reviewed as part of the pilot evaluation.

E. Legal implications

1. Due to the technical nature of the project and to the fact that the project is led by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform, part of the procurement is being conducted nationally. This includes

• collaboration space managed services
• video conferencing bridge

2. The national Procurement Advisory Group that oversees this process includes a member of the MPS Procurement Services. The procurement process is being conducted in accordance with guidelines and regulations.

3. There is a conflict of interest regarding the submission from one supplier. The conflict is defined by the fact that the supplier submitting for the contract was also involved in the prototype and members of the same company have been involved in the preparation of the national business case and the early stages of establishing the procurement process.

4. The Office for Criminal Justice reform (OCJR) as part of “due diligence” is undertaking a risk assessment which will be part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) drawn up by OCJR.

5. OCJR currently own this risk and acknowledge that there was an even greater risk if the potential supplier was excluded from the process.

6. The MOU will be submitted through MPS Procurement Services and MPS Legal Services for approval.

7. A senior member of the MPS Directorate of Information (DOI) is also involved in overseeing the procurement process and the drafting of the MOU.

F. Background papers

• none

G. Contact details

Report author(s): Sean Wilson Chief Inspector, TP-Emerald, Virtual Courts, MPS

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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