ALS "not good at all" says a Teeside Listings Officer
I had a booking in my diary (made quite some time ago) to work at Teeside Crown Court on 23 March - one of my last bookings. I was going to go and hopefully get a chance to see an ALS interpreter at work.
I received a call from a Listing Officer this morning. She said that unfortunately she had to cancel that booking. When I said that my understanding was that all the bookings made before 1 Feb were to be kept, she replied: “I am really sorry about this, but we have been told that any bookings made for hearings after 1 March will need to be cancelled”.
I asked her how it was going with ALS and she repeated a few times: “It’s not good at all”. She said that they (presumably the Listing Officers) had far more work to do and that it was not working. I explained to her why the majority of interpreters with the right qualifications would not work for ALS.