THE FINAL decision on the future of Tavistock's magistrates' court may not be taken until the middle of next year, it has emerged this week.

Devon County Council could seek a judicial review in the High Court if it loses its appeal to the Lord Chancellor's Department against the planned closure.

The appeal will probably not be resolved by the end of the year, when the Tavistock court is due to close.

A response by the LCD is now expected in January. The Devon and Cornwall Magistrates' Courts Committee cannot officially close the court until the appeal is resolved.

The MCC has been planning to schedule most local cases to be heard in Plymouth from January 1 — even if the courtroom is not officially closed. The courtroom would then be left to stand empty most of the time. Only a few cases, in which most of the participants are locals, would be heard in Tavistock.

Senior county councillors are said to be keen to pursue the matter to the High Court. The county's chief solicitor Roger Gash will seek advice from a Queen's Counsel next week on the chances of success.

A Devon County Council spokesman said that members would have to decide whether to pursue the case in the High Court if the appeal failed.

But Robert Hutley, head of the MCC, said talk of a judicial review was 'just sabre-rattling' as there had been no fault in the process.

According to Torridge and West Devon MP John Burnett, the programme of closures of local courts set out by the MCC is 'deeply flawed', because he said they were not obliged by the Government to cut their budgets by three per cent as the plan assumed.

This could form the basis of a judicial review. 'The battle is not over yet,' he said.

County councillor Bernard Hughes, who was one of the delegation to the LCD, said he was optimistic that some of the local courts might be reprieved and that Tavistock might be one of them.

He thought it was wrong that the issue should be determined by the unelected MCC instead of the elected county council and added that the MCC should not have begun a reorganisation of the courts before the appeal was heard.

Colleen Herriman, another delegation member, said they had shown the LCD minister Jane Kennedy a map of Devon and the gap that would be left by the closures.

'Devon is a special case,' she insisted.

Peter Hill, chairman of the West Devon magistrates, said the process was causing a lot of uncertainty. 'One just does not know where one is,' he said.

Mr Hutley said the Tavistock court was one of the worst in terms of facilities and would need 'a fantastic amount' spent on it to bring it up to minimum standards under the Human Rights Act and other laws.

He argued that transferring the West Devon bench to the Plymouth authority would make the system more flexible and more consistent. He agreed that the process was creating uncertainty for the MCC's 220 staff.

Objectors have argued that the cost of travel to Plymouth for a large number of users would be greater than the cost of modernising the court. The campaign to keep local courts open has been supported by politicians and councillors from all parties.