Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of single justice procedure notices.

HMCTS assessed the Single Justice Procedure Notice (SJPN) following a pilot with two prosecutors, the Metropolitan Police Service and TV Licensing, between December 2019 and February 2020 where a redesigned SJPN was trialled.

The SJPN was redesigned to encourage engagement. The pilot assessment showed that this was successful as the online plea rates and form completion improved following the redesigned SJPN. As a result of this there was an agreement to rollout the revised notice to all prosecutors who use the Single Justice Procedure.

Details of the assessment were published on 29 July 2022 and can be found by following the link: HMCTS single justice procedure notice pilots assessment - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).