Duty owed to the Crown

Mr Frankham made this Freedom of Information request to General Council of the Bar
This authority is not subject to FOI law, so is not legally obliged to respond (details).
This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

The request was successful.

Dear General Council of the Bar,

Please can you clarify if a barrister's duty is to the Crown before his/ her client.

How many complaints have been upheld against direct access barristers since their inception.

How many complaints have been made against direct access barrister Joseph Stanley Chiffers the nature of the complaint and actions taken.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Frankham

privacy, General Council of the Bar

Dear Mr Frankham

The General Council for the Bar is not a public authority and so is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. However, in the interests of transparency, we try and respond to FOI requests in the spirit of the Act. We are dealing with your request and will aim to respond within the statutory timescale for FOI requests, which would be by 16 May 2019.

Your sincerely

Hilary Pook
Data Protection Officer
The Bar Council
289-293 High Holborn
London WC1V 7HZ
Direct Line: 020 7611 1398
Switchboard: 020 7242 0082
Web: www.barcouncil.org.uk
Web: www.barstandardsboard.org.uk

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privacy, General Council of the Bar

Dear Mr Frankham

I write in response to your Freedom of Information request of 14 April.

First, please note that the General Council of the Bar (including the Bar Standards Board) is not subject formally to the Freedom of Information Act as we are not a public authority as outlined in Schedule 1 of the Act; however, we endeavour to respond to such requests with within the spirit of the Act, in the interests of transparency.

In your email, you asked if a barrister’s duty is to the Crown before his or her client. The answer is that a barrister’s first duty is to the Court before his or her client.

Secondly, you asked how many complaints have been upheld against direct access barristers since their inception. We do not record information about complaints in such a way that we would be able to provide these figures. Whilst we record the fact that a barrister does direct access work on our membership database, barristers may have multiple practice areas on their record. Our complaints database does not record whether complaints relate to direct access work, and there is no way of linking the two without detailed work on each case, which would amount to creating new information.

Lastly, you asked how many complaints have been made against direct access barrister Joseph Stanley Chiffers, the nature of the complaint and actions taken. I cannot provide you with this information beyond what would be public information in any case, because it would breach Mr Chiffers’ data protection rights. We publish findings against barristers on the Bar Standards Board website. See https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/com.... There are currently no findings published against Mr Chiffers.

I am sorry we cannot be of more help.

Yours sincerely

Hilary Pook
Data Protection Officer
The Bar Council
289-293 High Holborn
London WC1V 7HZ
Direct Line: 020 7611 1398
Switchboard: 020 7242 0082
Web: www.barcouncil.org.uk
Web: www.barstandardsboard.org.uk

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