Bond Solon Reviews

Course seemed 'tipped' towards the medical profession. I did find parts of the course quite 'heavy' especially around cross examination. This part left me quite anxious about going to court, which i have already so have a good understanding of what to expect. I think new persons to this especially Adult care Social Workers would find this difficult, It was good then to see the 'role play'. My expectation from the course that Coroners is the 'lesser' out of all the courts and it is more of a fact finding experience but the cross examination did make me question this.

More visual aids would have been nice as it was a lot of sitting and listening, although Geraint was very knowledgeable in the subject. The end practice session was a lot easier for those on the 2 day course to understand as they knew the scenario and had written the statement, so it would have been nice to have a preface to this for those only on the 1 day course. Additionally, it would have been nice to have given others to think of cross-examination questions after an example or 2, so we could think of ways that we can prepare in the future.

The course provided a lot of information around the section 8 process, and is really good at providing CPS expectations. There are some areas that are a bit repetitive, and also some cross over with other training.

I am clearer of the intended audience, however this course needs a change in approach. It has to help change the culture of the DO and the role, otherwise more officers will back off from doing this role. As is stands from the course it seems like everything has fallen down because of the DO, this is a team event and not just the DO. Maybe some sessions on disclosure strategies like, a detailed strategy on dealing with digital material when you have multiple devices and defendants. Some discussion on LPP as a reminder. This is an excellent opportunity to make the DO even better publicised, and make more officers want to do the job.

The concept of the course is really valuable to give people conducting the DO role an opportunity to explore the issues that they may experience and will have to deal with. It is a good opportunity to drill down to key risks in Disclosure that HMRC have identified. This could be focussing on key strategies that cause issues for Disclosure e.g. relevance, digital, material held by HMRC, sensitive material. The conference on the strategy session on day one if managed could really explore each of these. More use of all the group in all of the sessions (like day 3) would be beneficial - keep people engaged an occupied.

Jim was very engaging and knew a lot about the subject. He was friendly and approachable. Would have liked more practise with questioning techniques and preparing topics- this i felt was rushed. The case studies used didn't relate to any of the work carried out by the people on the course- more relevant case studies would be helpful.

Training mainly aimed at criminal cases. Could be better aimed at the specific role of an Insolvency Service Examiner and the types of interview we conduct.

Very useful course with a very good instructor in Ren.

Would be more useful if we were given a case report to write using a fictitious case. This would have given us the background and context to the course manual.

It was quite generic, I think I would have preferred a course based on medical legal/ criminal expert work. It is hard to keep to broad to ensure all types of witnesses are catered for. An editable version of a template for expert reports would be helpful.