Victim Notification Scheme (VNS): independent review

Section 17: The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service

SCTS has very limited involvement with the VNS. Beyond a central unit, victims' and witnesses' issues are dealt with by individual courts. Involvement is generally confined to responding to queries around eligibility from SPS where they have been approached about a sentence under 18 months. Their reply is a simple confirmation or otherwise. This appears to add an unnecessary layer to the VNS process, as we understand COPFS should have all the necessary details of victims on their case files and it ought to be readily available digitally with the correct information-sharing protocol.

Recommendation 5. Confirmation streamlining. Section 17.

We do not see a need for this additional layer and recommend that SPS and COPFS jointly look at how this procedure might be streamlined.