Dear DELF members,

You may have already received this via HMCTS notifications, but I have been asked by the Administrative Court Office to circulate the arrangements for applications for immediate/urgent consideration - please see the email below. Aside from urgent applications for immediate consideration which are to be sent to the newly created inbox, any other queries which relate to extradition or crime should be sent to: Administrativecourtoffice.crimex@hmcts.x.gsi.gov.uk.

The Chief Magistrate has confirmed this morning that:

• Telephone hearings in Court 3 are proceeding successfully.
• Two duty solicitors were in court yesterday and very many thanks are due to them. There was one new case yesterday and there appears to be one new one today. She suspects that situation will continue.
• Generally, all full hearings in the next 20 days will be adjourned on application, then listed for a no parties to attend in person but appear by telephone, email or by any other means.
• The extradition judges are sitting three courts a day in WMC with court 3 being the only extradition court.

In other news:

• M&S are offering free flowers to any shoppers if any of you are attending in person to WMC.

May I suggest that members, if not already doing so, track the Coronavirus Bill to follow the amendments to Section 206 of the Extradition Act 2003, as it appears that Live Link arrangements will be extended to extradition hearings and will include an interests of justice test for decisions in this regard, which may come into effect at any time if the Bill is passed.

Kind regards,
Hannah Hinton
DELF Court Liaison Officer

On Behalf Of Administrative Court Office, General Office
Sent: 24 March 2020 17:51
Subject: Administrative Court - Applications for Immediate/Urgent Consideration (“Immediates”) * OFFICIAL *
Importance: High

Dear All

Administrative Court - Applications for Immediate/Urgent Consideration (“Immediates”)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and further to the most recent Government advice regarding social distancing, from Wednesday 25 March 2020 until further notice the Administrative Court Office will no longer accept applications for immediate or urgent consideration over the counter or by post/DX.

“Immediates” applications – i.e. situations where it is contended that irreversible action will take place if the Court does not act to prevent it, or where an expedited judicial review is required, will now only be accepted electronically, as follows: 

1. Applications must be filed by email to administrativecourtoffice.immediates@hmcts.x.gsi.gov.uk . This inbox will be monitored Monday to Friday between the hours of 9:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Outside of these hours the existing out of hours procedure will apply.
2. If you are a legal representative you must include a PBA number in your covering email if you have one, or alternatively an undertaking to send a cheque for the fee by post within 7 days
3. If you are not legally represented, you must record in writing in your covering email that you agree to pay the court fee, or to file the relevant fee remission documentation with the Fees Office by post within 7 days. Any court order made as a result of your application will include a direction to this effect.  
4. Your application must be accompanied by an electronic bundle containing only those documents which it will be necessary for the court to read for the purposes of determining the application.
5. In all cases where the application is filed by a legal representative the electronic bundle:
   1. must be a single PDF not exceeding 20mb in size;
   2. must be numbered in ascending order regardless of whether multiple documents have been combined together (the original page numbers of the document will be ignored and just the bundle page number will be referred to)
   3. Index pages and authorities must be numbered as part of the single PDF document (they are not to be skipped; they are part of the single PDF and must be numbered).
   4. The default display view size of all pages must always be 100%.
   5. Texts on all pages must be selectable to facilitate comments and highlights to be imposed on the texts
   6. The bookmarks must be labelled indicating what document they are referring to (it is best to have the same name or title as the actual document) and also display the relevant page numbers.
   7. The resolution on the electronic bundle must be reduced to about 200 to 300 dpi to prevent delays whilst scrolling from one page to another.
   8. The index page must be hyperlinked to the pages or documents it refers to.

Any application filed by a legal representative that does not comply with the above rules on electronic bundles may not be considered by a judge. If the application is filed by a litigant in person the electronic bundle must if at all possible, comply with the above rules. If it is not possible for a litigant in person to comply with the rules on electronic bundles, the application must include a brief explanation of the reasons for this

6. If you are not legally represented and you do not have access to email, you should contact the Administrative Court Office by telephone on 020 7947 6158 (only to be used in an emergency) so that details of your application may be taken by telephone and alternative arrangements made if permitted by the Senior Legal Managers / Judge on duty.  

Any other urgent queries should be sent by email to administrativecourtoffice.generaloffice@hmcts.x.gsi.gov.uk as high priority and with ‘URGENT’ in the subject line. Any such emails will be dealt with as soon as possible.  

Thank you for your patience at this time.