Sentencing Guidelines

After the recent upgrade, the app does not work at all. Please fix it as it is essential for court work

I use this app all the time in Court and find it easy to use. Improvements with bookmarks and other features has made it much more user friendly and intuitive. I would recommend it to other Magistrates and Court users.

If I could give this less than 1 star, I would. Poorly written, no support, clunky to use, slow, poor search facilities, often incomplete guidelines compared to Ambay. Just reeks of the SGC awarding the build to the lowest bidder. No surprises there then!

It’s exactly as you see if you go online. Quick easy and user friendly. No complaints

The paid for app is night and day better. Search Magistrate in the App Store and use CourtManager

Sorry to say this remains a poor comparator to the Ambay app. Bookmarks still don’t persist, the layout often looks crowded on an iPad screen, and the titling of offences often doesn’t match the way they are listed in court. As this is now the only available app, it needs urgent work to make it truly fit for purpose. As other contributors have suggested, maybe some input from an actual end user or two might be the answer!

Ambay showed the way in producing a user-friendly app; this is the exact opposite. Yes, (most) of the information is there somewhere but js often difficult to find, making it frustrating for use in court. Speak to magustrates, get their detailed feedback and then redesign!

I had used the Ambay App almost since its conception (when it was free!). It has been brilliant and always up to date - more so than the Court ipads. Sadly, as my subscription ran out in February and cannot be renewed, I now have to resort to the HMCTS version. I can now no longer mark offence page numbers for quick reference on my Court day list or create a 'favourites' list. Therefore there are inevitable, frustrating delays. I could, but dare not, say more!!

These guidelines are suppose to support Magistrates in Court. The index is totally worthless, if one is dealing with a house burglary why search dwelling house, all burglaries should be under one heading with a breakdown of ‘types’ following, similarly with theft offences. The fines calculator is confusing and why do you have to go to another page to add additional fines. The commercial offering was by far a superior product which people were prepared to pay for. Why withdraw access to the pdf pages? The old bench book was of more use.

I do not find the problems with bookmarks that others mention. The fines calculator works well. It’s pretty solid. My only gripe is that the search function isn’t great. It can be difficult to find an offence given on the printed court list because of inconsistencies in terminology.