Amendment to Local Court Practice Note Crim 1 - Case management of criminal proceedings in the Local Court

27/10/2020

The Chief Magistrate has published an updated Local Court Practice Note Crim 1 as amended from 23 October 2020.

The amendments made in this update include the following:

• Clause 5.3(d) is amended to update the reference to Practice Note Comm 1 to Practice Note Comm 2 (the Early Appropriate Guilty Pleas Practice Note);

• Chapter 11 is amended to reflect changes to Division 5 of Part 3 of the Fines Act 1996 introduced by the Fines Amendment Act 2020. The language used throughout the Chapter has been updated to align with the amended Act. No substantive changes have been made to existing procedures;

• Chapter 13 'Forum Sentencing' has been removed as this program ceased operating in January 2018;

• Attachment A 'Notice of Appearance in Summary Criminal Trials' is amended to remove the check box section requiring the legal representative to consent to methods for service of the brief. The Notice now aligns with rule 5.10(2) of the Local Court Rules 2009 which provides service by DX, facsimile and/or email is permitted if the legal representative specifies a DX address, fax number or email address in the Notice;

• Attachment B 'Local Court Listing Advice' is amended to replace the reference to clause 25 of the repealed Criminal Procedure Regulation 2010 with the equivalent clause 27 of the Criminal Procedure Regulation 2017.