The Common Platform provides access to relevant case information for all parties involved in criminal cases, including the judiciary, solicitors and barristers, the Crown Prosecution Service and court staff.

Early adopter courts across England and Wales will test the system before the subsequent rollout to all criminal courts over 12 months. This will begin in Derby and then roll out incrementally to the others in the series.

Criminal courts trialling the Common Platform

• Derby Magistrates’ Court and Crown Court
• Croydon Magistrates’ Court and Crown Court
• Guildford Magistrates’ Court/Staines Magistrates’ Court and Guildford Crown Court
• North Tyneside, Mid and South-East Northumberland Magistrates’ Courts, and Newcastle Crown Court
• Warrington Magistrates’ Court and Chester Crown Court
• Bristol Magistrates’ Court and Crown Court
• Llanelli Magistrates’ Court and Swansea Crown Court

Benefits for the early adopter courts

The system will make all information about a case, such as charges, evidence and results, accessible digitally to all parties. Access to different kinds of information is securely controlled to make sure that each participant only sees the material that is appropriate to them.

The Common Platform cuts down the need for manual document handling and reduces the amount of paper documents produced. It also removes the need to copy information from one digital platform to another at different stages in a case, improving the way criminal cases are accessed, managed and processed. It will eventually replace the existing software applications: Libra, XHIBIT, Bench, Court Store and Digital Mark-Up with a single, streamlined system.

Amanda Lowndes, Midlands Head of Crime, commented:

We are pleased to have been chosen as the first of the early adopter courts to test the Common Platform digital product: it shows the confidence placed in us that we can successfully rise to the challenge in these uncertain times. I’d like to thank everyone involved for their hard work and the commitment they have shown to supporting the testing of this new digital platform.

I’m confident that by providing all the criminal case information in one place, and in a digital format, the Common Platform will help us support all organisations in the criminal justice system.

It will help us to work more effectively together, reduce delays and make evidence sharing easier. We’re very keen to work with our judges and others to test this digital product in our court.

The delivery of training and support to court staff, the judiciary and criminal justice partners in the first of these locations is already underway.

Once the early adopter phase is complete, the system will then be gradually expanded to all criminal courts in England and Wales.

The events of recent months have provided a stark reminder of the inequalities that continue to exist in our society, within the UK Armed Forces and within defence as a whole. It is mission critical for defence, if we are to safeguard the security, stability and prosperity of our nation, that we recruit and retain the most able people drawn from the broadest diversity of thought, skills and background. While we have made some progress on matters of diversity, inclusion and inappropriate behaviour, we are clear that if we are to improve the diversity and inclusion of our work force we must take urgent action to access and maximise all our talent.

We are determined to make a collective commitment as follows:

We will set targets and we will be held to account for delivering the policy, process and behavioural changes required to deliver the levels of ambition that each Front Line Command has set for 2025. To drive transparency and accountability, each Front Line Command will publish publicly its levels of ambition and associated delivery plans by September 2020. To enable this, we are committed to resourcing our D&I teams with high quality military and civilian staff and we will provide increased funding for our D&I programmes.

We will modernise the promotion system so that it fairly maximises everyone’s potential and where emotional intelligence (EQ), integrity and behaviours are considered equally alongside objective delivery. To drive this change, we will conduct an independent review of promotion boards (to report in early 2021), refresh our current appraisals process, and review all job specifications to remove arbitrary barriers to progression, expanding our talent pools.

We will modernise the career structure and associated terms and conditions of service to make it more flexible, focusing more on potential. Recognising the increasing requirement for specialist career streams, it must enable initiatives like lateral entry that can accelerate the growth of a more diverse workforce. Building on the recommendations within the Wigston Report, we will champion positive action pathways (fro example, the Women’s Development Programme), and we will use our D&I champions and networks as critical partners throughout.

We believe it is critical that everyone has confidence in the Service Complaints system, both to report their experiences, but importantly to trust that where evidence of inappropriate behaviours is presented, swift action will be taken. Following the release of the Service Complaints review findings in Autumn 2020, we will take personal ownership for implementation of the recommendations. We will also work to ensure parity and coherence with the civilian grievance system to drive a unified culture that has zero tolerance at its core.

We each have a responsibility to drive change within the Front Line Commands and within defence. We must embed D&I into our culture. We are committed to setting a personal example; genuinely to improving the lived experience for everyone; and regularly engaging with our D&I agenda by being held formally to account by publishing a report every 6 months. We are all determined to deliver this agenda and to taking demonstrable action with immediate effect.

Signed by

Launching the ‘call for evidence’, the Independent Chief Inspector, David Bolt said:

I am about to begin an inspection of the management by Border Force of freight arriving at UK ports of entry (seaports, airports and rail terminals) and would like to hear from anyone with knowledge and practical experience of how this is working.

I am particularly interested in hearing from independent traders, trade associations, and businesses reliant on the efficient and effective processing of freight about what appears to be working well, and why, and what is not working or could be improved, both pre-arrival and at ports, including the clarity of any guidance, information or assistance provided by Border Force.

While this is not intended to be an inspection of Brexit preparedness, I am also interested to understand to what extent stakeholders feel that Border Force has engaged with their issues and concerns about how its management of freight arrivals will be affected.

Please note that my statutory remit does not extend to investigating or making decisions about individual cases. This remains a Home Office responsibility. However, I do take an interest in individual cases where they illustrate or point to systemic problems.

Background

ICIBI’s 2013 inspection report looking at Border Force freight operations examined how well Border Force identified risks to border security, the effectiveness of physical controls, and how interventions by Border Force deterred criminal activity. It also examined the relationship between Border Force and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

Since 2013, a number of ICIBI inspections have included freight operations as part of a wider look at Border Force functions, such as the inspection of intelligence functions in 2015, and the inspections of east coast seaports and of south coast seaports in 2017 and 2018 respectively.

How to respond

Please click here to email your submission to the Chief Inspector by 22 August 2020.

In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) we need your permission to process and retain the information you submit in your submission, by clicking here a consent statement will automatically be added to your email.

However if you are using a non-compatible email client then please send your submission to CfEFreight@icibi.gov.uk with ‘ICIBI Freight Inspection 2020’ in the subject line and include the following consent statement in the body of your email, ‘I consent to the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration retaining and processing the information and data in this email.’

Please do not include this statement if you do not wish to give your consent. The information you submit may be quoted in the final inspection report, but it is the ICIBI’s practice not to name sources and to anonymise as much as possible any examples or case studies.

The information you submit may be quoted in the final inspection report, but it is the ICIBI’s practice not to name sources and to anonymise, as much as possible, any examples or case studies.

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