Virtual courts should not be rolled out nationally following a critical Ministry of Justice evaluation of a year-long pilot, the Law Society has said.

The MoJ said yesterday that the pilot was successful in reducing the average time from charge to first hearing, failure to appear rates, and prisoner transportation and police cell costs – but that these savings were exceeded by costs of the pilot, and particularly those associated with the technology used.

In light of the MoJ’s findings, Society president Linda Lee said it would be ‘wholly irresponsible for the government to roll out an expensive and inefficient process when justice and the rule of law is at stake’.

She added: ‘There are clearly operational as well as financial flaws to virtual courts that point towards an obvious conclusion: they do not work. The idea of virtual courts was to speed up the process and save money. The pilot shows it has failed on both counts.

‘The Society has, for some time, been opposing the virtual courts idea for a range of reasons, including the impact it would have on genuine access to justice. The report highlighted a worrying problem for those engaged in the court process. Magistrates and district judges presiding over virtual court cases had more difficulty in imposing authority remotely, and perceived that defendants took the process less seriously than they would if they appeared in person.

‘The physical separation of the virtual court also made it harder for defence and CPS advocates to communicate before and during hearings.

‘Virtual court activity also placed additional burdens on police custody officers, case file handlers and, most significantly, designated detention officers, who were charged with overseeing virtual court hearings in custody suites.’

The virtual court was piloted between May 2009 and May 2010 in one magistrates’ court and 15 police stations in London, and one magistrates’ court and a police station in North Kent. Selected defendants did not attend the first hearing in the magistrates’ court, but remained in the police station with a video link to the court.