For some time I have been gathering knowledge and information about a body that, without fanfare and indeed not a little secrecy, was created in 2018. My first post on this topic was on 14th June of that year. Later, in October, quietly and without any public announcement a new body was inserted into the governance of the magistracy. It was called the Magistrates Leadership Executive, the MLE. It came bearing the imprimatur of the Lord Chief Justice, the endorsement of the Senior Presiding Judge and the stated purpose of providing the magistracy with 'strategic leadership.' The official narrative runs as follows: the old National Bench Chairmen's Forum had served its purpose; the 2016 Justice Select Committee had identified a need for more strategic leadership of the magistracy; after extensive consultation a new body was created with the support of the senior judiciary to provide just that.
Support from magistrates was less enthusiastic. At that time the apex of their representation was the National Bench Chairmen's Forum, a body whose members were elected by their peers; bench chairs chosen by bench chairs, accountable to those who selected them. Its abolition was preceded by a consultation. That consultation found that a majority of magistrates doubted the need for change at all and that among those prepared to accept reform a clear majority wanted any successor body to be elected rather than appointed. Both findings were registered but were set aside. Instead an appointed body was created reporting not to the magistracy but to the Senior Presiding Judge. Within a year of its creation two of its first members had resigned without explanation.
The decision to appoint rather than elect, as it was later explained to the Justice Select Committee, was taken because an appointed body would have greater 'status' in dealings with the senior judiciary. In simple terms the process was just another episode in the erosion of the binary concept of an independent part time lay magistracy which was also the most junior part of the judiciary. The principle underlying this arrangement is ancient and important: that justice in the lower courts should be administered by the people, through the people, with no professional stake in the outcome. Indeed the Ministry of Justice with its recent frantic advertising for new magistrates to overcome the previous government`s recruitment deficit consistently emphasises the continuing need for local people to administer local justice.
The National Bench Chairmen's Forum embodied this principle in its governance. Its members were elected by the bench chairs of their regions. They were accountable to those who chose them and could be removed by them. They were, in a meaningful sense, representatives of the magistracy. The MLE is not. Its members are selected through a process that the public cannot observe by a panel whose composition is not published, appointed by the Lord Chief Justice on the advice of the Senior Presiding Judge. Their continuance in office depends on the SPJ's satisfaction. Their terms of reference can be altered or terminated by the SPJ.
The logic offered for this arrangement was that the 'status' as above was enhanced in dealings with HMCTS via the judiciary and by default to government. It might be noted in passing that an institution which can only acquire status by surrendering democratic accountability has a somewhat complicated relationship with the concept of representation. It is either a sophisticated constitutional argument or an admission that the independence of the magistracy's leadership was deliberately curtailed to make it more pliable. Readers may form their own view. Beneath all the gentlemanly toing and froing there is under it all a political conjurer`s sleight of hand argument: it concedes, without apparently meaning to, that the MLE's authority flows downward from the judiciary, not upward from the magistracy.
Three magistrates have held the post of National Leadership Magistrate. Jo King JP was the first, appointed July 2018. She had been the moving force behind the proposals that created the role she then took up; a sequence of events that should at minimum have prompted independent scrutiny of the appointment process and evidently did not. Duncan Webster OBE JP succeeded her in 2019. His tenure was characterised by an accessible public presence; committee appearances, conference speeches, extensive correspondence with bench chairs and by one episode that demands examination at greater length than it normally receives. In January 2022 following the extension of magistrates' maximum custodial powers to twelve months significant criticism was directed at the magistracy from elements of the legal profession. Webster's response was to write to all magistrates. He had spoken, he told them, to the Lord Chief Justice. They had concluded together that it would not be 'appropriate nor dignified' for the magistracy to respond publicly. The Lord Chief Justice was, he added, confident that magistrates would exercise their powers responsibly.
Let us be precise about what happened here. The nominally unelected independent leader of the magistracy consulted the most senior professional judge in the land and then wrote to 13,000 unpaid members of the part time lay magistracy to instruct them not to speak. That instruction was issued in the name of representation. Its content was suppression.
The current National Leadership Magistrate is Alexia Fetherstonhaugh JP appointed by Lady Chief Justice Carr on the advice of Lord Justice Green with a term running to December 2026. Her deputy is Emily Aitken-Fell JP. Nine regional and specialist positions complete the current complement of twelve. Their names are now published on the judiciary website. Whether the magistrates in their regions know who they are, or what they do, is a different question.
For the record below is the current membership of the MLE (as published on the Judiciary website, 2026)
Alexia Fetherstonhaugh JP, National Leadership Magistrate
Emily Aitken-Fell JP, Deputy National Leadership Magistrate
Sara Brown JP, London Regional Leadership Magistrate
Clare Sawdon MBE DL JP, Midlands Regional Leadership Magistrate
Sharon Gould JP, North East Regional Leadership Magistrate
Kulvinder Panesar JP, North West Regional Leadership Magistrate
Jacky Froggatt JP, South East Regional Leadership Magistrate
Thura KT Win JP LLM FCMI MCIArb, South West Regional Leadership Magistrate
Lisa Gerson MBE JP, Wales Leadership Magistrate
Dippy Kharaud JP, Lead Diversity and Community Relations Magistrate
David Browne JP, National Digital Lead
Nigel Woodley JP, Deputy National Digital Lead Judiciary
Their power is limited to three categories. First, consultation responses participating in reviews, submitting evidence and attending hearings. Second, internal communications; the mechanism by which the Lord Chief Justice's views reach all magistrates, as the 2022 episode above illustrated. Third, strategic planning: the MLE produced a Strategy for the Magistracy for the period 2019 to 2022, endorsed by the Lord Chief Justice and then decided not to make it publicly available; a detail of almost satirical aptness for a body whose defining characteristic is the management of information. Recent developments suggest that HMCTS's programme of digital transformation is now formally within the MLE's ambit. Whether this represents a genuine voice for magistrates in the digitisation process or an additional channel through which digitisation policy is transmitted to the benches, remains to be seen.
The Magistrates' Association has stated publicly and repeatedly that the MLE lacks legitimacy, that its members should be elected and that in its present form it is not a meaningful voice for the magistracy. The MA believes that elections, not selections, will ensure accountability.
It is unsurprising that relationships between the MLE and the Magistrates Association have not been without friction. This blogger has not infrequently commented upon the latter organisation`s tendency to parrot government initiatives with nary a criticism and to question whether it truly represents the views of its members never mind the magistracy as a whole. In 2025 a formal governance consultation sought views on the future structure of magistracy leadership. The MLE submitted its response included in which was a proposal to expand its own membership and to remove the MA from regional governance structures. The MA's reaction was restrained but unmistakable. It was not unexpected therefore that the MA has opined that they risked weakening the independent voice of magistrates. They prioritised the expansion of the appointed body at the expense of the elected one. Undoubtedly the net effect of the proposal, if implemented, would be to further concentrate the formal representation of the magistracy in a body accountable to the judiciary while reducing the influence of the body accountable to magistrates themselves. This would complete a logic that has been present in the structure since 2018 building further on increased emasculation of an independent magistracy in the decade previously.
Last week I commented on the Courts and Tribunals Bill 2026. This is arguably the most consequential legislation affecting the magistracy in a generation. To its credit the Magistrates Association has been engaged, articulate and specific. Its national chair has given evidence, issued public statements and pressed a clear position, broadly supportive of the direction but insistent on resources. Magistrates' courts face genuine bottlenecks; insufficient legal advisers, insufficient probation presence, insufficient courtroom capacity. The reforms will only work if those bottlenecks are addressed. This is a serious argument, made seriously, in the right forums. By contrast the MLE has not, in any traceable form, said anything about any of it.
The Senior Presiding Judge cannot comment (publicly) on legislation before Parliament. The National Leadership Magistrate reports to the Senior Presiding Judge. The NLM's ability to speak publicly on matters before Parliament is therefore constrained by the same conventions that constrain the judiciary. At precisely the moment when the magistracy most needs a leadership with a public voice; at the moment of its greatest political significance in twenty years the body formally appointed to provide that leadership is constitutionally forbidden from providing it. Silence has spoken.
The MLE is best understood not as a standalone curiosity but as one episode in a longer process. Across the 21st century the independence of the magistracy has been progressively diminished. Half the country`s magistrates courts have closed. Administrative functions once managed locally by bench committees are now controlled by HMCTS. The role of the justices' clerk, the independent legal adviser whose presence once provided a meaningful check on institutional pressure, has been weakened by structural changes to the legal adviser function. The governance of the magistracy itself has been transferred from an elected body to an appointed one that reports to the professional judiciary. Each of these changes has been presented as modernisation.
I have no reason to believe that individual members of the MLE are not, by all available evidence, dedicated, capable and well-intentioned. This post is not directed at them. It is directed at the structure they inhabit and the interests that structure serves. Whether or not it also serves their individual egos and ambitions is not for me to opine. My personal involvement as a magistrate began just prior to the dying embers of the ancient regime finally being extinguished. Soon there will be few of my former colleagues who will have a memory of how things used to be. The mantra of local justice for local people now has reduced substance with 300 or so active professional District Judges[MC] or Deputies employed by HMCTS.
There are some who question the continued longevity of the institution of lay justices. However until the day comes when this country can afford the increased costs of an estimated 700-1,000 full time salaried only judiciary for the lower [soon to be lowest?court] i.e. District Judges, the magistracy is likely to remain as an institution where over 90% of criminal cases are completed despite many within the legal profession hoping otherwise. The MLE cannot protect or articulate that principle because the terms of its existence prevent it from doing so. It cannot advocate independently. It cannot speak to Parliament. It cannot challenge HMCTS publicly. It cannot even claim to speak for those it represents because those people never chose it.
Lay justice in England and Wales is not dead. It is alive in the daily work of every bench. But the governance of lay justice, the structures that are supposed to give magistrates a voice, has been captured. The MLE is the evidence for that capture, clearly visible to anyone who cares to look.
Those who govern us are addicted to secrecy. We read and hear about it every day. Tribunals, hospitals, charities, police, supposed independent inquiries etc etc etc. The delegated guardians of our well being; the bodies charged with supervising the supervisors have that similar common theme. Until that mentality of government changes the MLE will fall into line. The question is whether anyone in a position to change it is willing to do so. The evidence so far is not encouraging.
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