I WAS most concerned to read in the Guardian (July 7) of the proposed closure of Northwich Magistrates' Court and entirely support your campaign to keep the court open.

Although I now live in London, I was born and brought up in Cheshire and have a particular reason to be grateful to that Court, its staff and local solicitors. From an early age I had an ambition to become a lawyer but, having no family connections in the law, I did not know where to turn for advice. My father, however, knew a local magistrate and he suggested that I should visit the local court in my school holidays to see it in action.

I duly turned up at the Court one Tuesday morning - feeling somewhat nervous - asking to sit in the public gallery. The staff and local solicitors immediately made me feel welcome, taking the trouble to explain law and procedure. I came back every week during my school and college holidays and on each occasion the magistrates and their clerks (then Geoffrey Culey and his able deputy Ken Morley) went out of their way to encourage and support me.

As well as being grateful for the support I was given, the quality of justice administered at the Court impressed me enormously. The magistrates - all unpaid volunteers - gave everyone who appeared before them a scrupulously fair hearing. Justice was administered speedily, within only a few weeks of an alleged offence being committed, at a courthouse only a short distance away from the homes of magistrates, defendants and witnesses alike.

It was also of enormous value, in my judgement, that justice was administered by magistrates familiar with the local area and its problems.

One can only speculate as to the effect on the quality of local justice if Northwich Court closed and cases transferred to Crewe or Chester. As you rightly point out this will cause great inconvenience to all concerned.

I am now a barrister working in London, and I often look back, with affection and gratitude, to those early days at Northwich Magistrates' Court where I learnt far more about practice and procedure that I could ever have been taught at College. It would be a tragedy if the quality of justice I witnessed in those early days was to be denied the people of Cheshire, sacrificed on an altar of economy and administrative convenience. I wish the Guardian every success in its opposition to these ill conceived proposals.

TREVOR MILLINGTON

Address supplied.

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