The Magistrates' Courts Rules 1981

EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This Note is not part of the Rules.)

These Rules consolidate, with some minor amendments, the various Rules relating to procedure in magistrates' courts specified in the Schedule to these Rules.

The only amendments of substance are contained in rules 41 and 57. Rule 41(4) is amended so as to require that, where reasons for a decision in domestic proceedings have been recorded under rule 36 of these Rules, the clerk of the court to which a complaint for variation, revocation etc. of an order for periodical payments is made shall, if the justice determines under rule 41(4) that the complaint could be more conveniently dealt with by a court acting for another petty sessions area, send a copy of the record of those reasons, in addition to the complaint and the written particulars referred to in rule 41(3), to the clerk of the court acting for that other petty sessions area. Consequential amendments are made to paragraphs (6), (7) and (8) of rule 41.

Rule 57 (which deals with transfer of fine orders) is amended in consequence of the coming into operation on 1st December 1980 of section 40 of, and paragraphs 1 and 3 of Schedule 7 to, the Criminal Law Act 1977 which, inter alia, made new provision for the transfer of fines between England and Wales and Northern Ireland.