Magistrates' court home
Welcome to our new-look website.
You will find the magistrates’ court sentencing guidelines, overarching guidelines and supplementary information on the magistrates’ court search page.
You will find the fine calculator, drink-driving calculator, pronouncement-card builder and supporting information either from within every guideline or under “Guidelines” in the top-level navigation bar.
The guidelines, tools and other pages look different from the old website, but they work in much the same way, with one exception:
· on the pronouncement builder, to move a pronouncement card from the left-hand column to the right to include it in your pronouncement, you should now click on + rather than dragging it over.
Bookmarking and collections
To build a list of guidelines for use during a sitting, you could use the new bookmarking function built into the Sentencing Council website or the collections function in the browser.
Use the bookmarking function to save up to 50 guidelines (beware – bench laptops will clear your bookmarks when the browser is closed).
1. New Search for the guideline using the Magistrates’ court guidelines search. Select the bookmark icon to the right of the guideline title
or
To open your list of bookmarks, click on the white bookmark icon on the far right of the top-level navigation.
Collections: on bench laptops, collections should be retained after the browser has been closed.
1. Click the collections icon (plus sign or list icon), use Ctrl+Shift+Y or go to settings (three dots) in the top-right corner of your browser window
2. Start new collection
3. Add current page
Bookmarking guidelines for offline use – own devices
To bookmark up to 50 guidelines for later use when you are offline, add your bookmark list page to your browser favourites while you are still online.
1. When you are online, bookmark your guideline(s) using the methods shown above
2. Open your list of bookmarks by clicking on the white bookmark icon on the far right of the top-level navigation
3. To save your bookmarks for offline viewing, you can either:
· click on the star icon in the url/address bar of your browser to add it to your favourites, or
· locate the padlock icon to the left of the url in the url/address bar, drag and drop it onto your favourites bar
Once a guideline is bookmarked it will be saved in your browser for viewing offline for 30 days. Manually or automatically clearing the cache in your browser will remove any bookmarks.
Highlighting
The highlighting function from the iPad app is not supported on the website.
iPad app – please remove
The new site has been designed specifically to work on mobile devices so you can access the full functionality of the website using the browser on your own tablet or phone, whatever the brand.
This development means that it will no longer be necessary for the Council to develop two parallel versions, and we are no longer supporting the magistrates’ court iPad app. If you are currently using the app, we would encourage you to move to the website as soon as possible because the information on the app will quickly become out of date.
Help and support
If you need any help, please let us know by emailing [email protected]. We aim to respond within 24 hours on weekdays but often respond more quickly.
This site will continue to grow and have new content and tools added. If you have suggestions of things that would be useful or that you need when sentencing, please get in touch using the feedback box at the bottom of every guideline or by email.