Talk:List of honorary recorders

To be checked and updated
The following positions appear to be vacant: if they have been re-appointed to they should be added back into the article Wham2001 (talk) 08:00, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Recorder of Burnley (Her Honour Judge Watson) (Burnley) - appears to have retired
 * Recorder of Guildford (His Honour Judge Critchlow, DL) (Guildford) - appears to have retired
 * Recorder of Hereford (His Honour Judge Hooper, QC) (Worcester sitting at Hereford) - retired
 * Recorder of Kensington and Chelsea (His Honour Judge McGregor-Johnson) (Isleworth) - retired
 * Recorder of King's Lynn - A decision was made to delegate authority to make the appointment but I can find no record of the appointment itself having been made.
 * Recorder of Reading (Her Honour Judge Zoe Smith, DL) (Reading) - HHJ Zoe Smith has moved on but no evidence of a replacement
 * Recorder of Southampton (His Honour Judge Hope) (Southampton) - Retired 2014

Anomalous appointments
This article states: "The title of honorary recorder is awarded by a borough council to a judge who sits at the Crown Court within their domain." The first part of this reflects section 54(1) of the Courts Act 1971, which provides: "The council of a borough shall have power to appoint a person to be honorary recorder of the borough." (The second part does not seem to be accurate. The 1971 Act does not set out a requirement as to where an honorary recorder must sit, and indeed the Recorder of Westminster sits at Southwark Crown Court, which is in the London Borough of Southwark, not the City of Westminster.)

Most of the recorders listed have indeed been appointed by a borough council (or a city council, which is effectively a type of borough council). But there appear to be two anomalies: neither Amersham nor Aylesbury are boroughs. They are both currently within the unitary authority of Buckinghamshire, and before that were in the districts of Chiltern and Aylesbury Vale respectively, neither of which were boroughs either. I can't find any information on the Recorder of Amersham, but the Recorder of Aylesbury appears to have been appointed as such by Aylesbury Town Council, which is, well, a town council (a type of parish council), not a borough council.

Why have these town councils been permitted to make appointments reserved by statute to boroughs? Or have they just unilaterally decided to do so and no one has thought to object? Proteus (Talk) 16:12, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Deletion of section "Historical Recorders"
I have deleted this section. First, it is irrelevant here: those listed would have held a substantive office: this article deals with honorary appointments. Second, all the 60 or so non-county boroughs which are listed in the article Court of quarter sessions, plus the larger number of county boroughs which are not listed, would have each had their own Recorder prior to 1972 (or 1951, as the case may be), so why single out just four boroughs?Ntmr (talk) 19:51, 6 October 2022 (UTC)