Shropshire Star

Star comment: Ultimate sanction for court

The bureaucrats and bean counters have donned their black caps. At the tender age of only 21, Shrewsbury Magistrates Court has received the ultimate sanction.

Published
Shrewsbury Magistrates Court

Its crime has been that modern society cannot afford to keep it alive. And so its closure, which has been in the air for some time, has now been confirmed.

This is not a triumph for local justice. This is the principles of local justice being extinguished before our eyes and the imposition of remote justice, because for some people in Shropshire it now means it would be nearer for them to travel to court at Hereford, Wrexham, Chester or even Birkenhead.

There will not be much sympathy for the guilty and the career criminals. For them the number of times they have to trek to Telford court will be governed by the number of times they get caught.

But it has to be remembered that a lot of people who have business in the courts are not criminals but witnesses, magistrates and an army of professional people who work within the judicial system one way or the other.

The latter are going to have to travel to Telford virtually every day, while those on the receiving end of justice will only need to go there once in a while.

In other words, closing the magistrates court in Shrewsbury is going to mean an extra cost falling on a lot of people in time, fuel and parking charges, and an extra cost to the environment through extra traffic and therefore more pollution on the roads heading towards Telford.

This assumes people with business to do at Telford court will go there by car.

They might instead rely on Shropshire's swift and efficient public transport system which ensures remote rural areas in all parts of the county are well connected.

We are, of course, being ironic.

We all know the public finance backdrop against which decisions like this are being made, and closing Shrewsbury court no doubt does look to be a saving to the public finances. But the reason it saves money is that the wider financial consequences and inconvenience fall on the local community.

The court at Shrewsbury opened relatively recently in the general scheme of things, in October 1994.

And now we have to report a robbery. Because closing this court will rob Shropshire of the principle that has seen local offenders dealt with within their local communities for centuries.

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