News Brief

Urgent: fees underpayment for part time judicial sittings

Calling all part-time fee-paid judges; you could be owed £1,000-£10,000 following Miller and O’Brien. Anyone who thinks they may be eligible for compensation should email the Judicial Pay Claims Unit at JudicialPayClaims@justice.gsi.gov.uk as soon as possible. Retired Circuit Judge HH John Platt warns on www.counselmagazine.co.uk that an unpublished moratorium on pay claims may expire on 31 October 2014. So far less than half of those entitled have lodged claims.

Pupillage: matched funding

Chambers are invited to submit applications to the Council of the Inns of Court’s Pupillage Matched Funding Scheme for 2015/16. Designed to encourage the provision of additional pupillages at the publicly funded Bar, the Inns will match the first-six funding already provided by chambers. Apply online by 5pm on 1 December. See p 17.

PQBD’s criminal review

Practitioners are urged to contribute to the President of the Queen’s Bench Division’s Review of Efficiency in Criminal Proceedings, open for responses until 1 November: www.judiciary.gov.uk/ the-president-of-the-queens-benchdivisions-review-of-efficiency-in-criminalproceedings/. The Bar Council’s Criminal Justice Reform Group, led by HH Geoffrey Rivlin QC to deal with issues arising from the Sir Bill Jeffrey and Sir Brian Leveson reviews, surveyed practitioners last month.

Putting a price on entities

Comments are welcomed by 10 October on a proposed fee structure for BSB entity authorisation (email:entityregulation@barstandardsboard.org.uk). Operating on a “cost-recovery basis” so that the whole Bar does not subsidise entity regulation through the PCF, the authorization process would comprise an application fee, authorisation fee and an annual

fee calculated according to size and complexity. Under the proposals a single person entity would pay £980 in its first year of registration; £390 per year thereafter. A 15+ person entity would pay £7,150 in its first year; £2,900 thereafter.