Minutes of the Operational Performance Committee – January 2025

Minutes of meeting held on 14 January 2025 by Microsoft Teams

Present:

• Stephen McGowan, Deputy Crown Agent – Litigation (Chair) (DCA)
• Andrew Richardson, Procurator Fiscal, High Court (AR)
• Laura Buchan, Procurator Fiscal, Policy and Engagement (LB)
• Andrew Laing, Deputy Head of Local Court (AL)
• Andy Shanks, Deputy Procurator Fiscal, Specialist Casework (AS
• Fiona Roberts, Head of Management Information Unit (FR)
• Lana Thomas, PA DCA – Serious Casework (Secretariat) (LT)

Absent:

• Gavin Anderson, Head of Business Management Local Court (GA)

The DCA welcomed everyone to the meeting and noted apologies for the above.

Agreed.

Continued.

High Court

Paper noted, AR highlighted the ongoing Time Bar issues and that they still await news regarding saving provisions. LB updated that her team met with SG last week and highlighted the Time Bar issues to them. LB noted that the C.A has also spoken with the Director of Justice to emphasis the impact on the wider Justice system if we don’t get savings provisions.

Local Court

Paper noted, AL provided highlights:

Case marking - there is worry police have allowed their backlog to rise, back to 10k as it was at its height, slightly artificially low figure for unmarked cases, down at 5k, this due to Police restructure, they have less resource in their Case marking unit.

Cases over 4 weeks reduced from 9000 in April 23 to 1548 in Jan 25.

Summary Case Management national roll out - requires additional Case Marking resource, unmarked cases may rise, warning if we see that figure climb it’ll be due to our own restrictions or police over reporting. There is a growing difference between SCM and non SCM courts.

SH & J - Strong message out about only putting cases on Petition if necessary, colleagues advised to look at possibility of marking as summary. By applying this logic this has meant that the figure for new Petitions is down to 700.

Early indicting is one of the tools flagged that we should be looking into.

SCTS content with our projections for indicting 650 per month, which also reached 700 one month.

Specialist Casework

Paper noted, AS highlighted a few points -, Internal target of closing routine deaths within 6 weeks is at 98% and 12-week target for closing investigative deaths is 73%.

Legacy Deaths - currently looking at how to deploy additional legacy death funding, plans to introduce recording mechanism to ensure going in the right direction. AS will provide an update next month on the what the shape and size of the Legacy Deaths team will look like.

HSIU – As of 23.12.2024- 39 convictions have been obtained (since 16 April 2024) This compares with 32 convictions for the full financial year 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.

Policy & Engagement

Paper noted, LB highlighted a couple of points -

Couple of committee appearances coming up at end of month

• Assisted dying bill – LB and AS due to speak at that
• Emma Forbes and LB attending criminal justice modernisation/ Dom Hom review

Sexual offences review- Steph Ross will be leading with 2 deputes, don’t know how much resource will be required –LB has chapter to fact check by end of week- timescale wise- expect it to be towards end of month before it comes out.

• Nil

UNRC Compliance - further update circulated- the group discussed this at length, unable to clear and move forward as future of OPC is uncertain with new structure.  LB to update Steph and investigate where else this could sit.

Date of Next Meeting:

20 February 2025