# The Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 (Sentence Review Commissioners) Rules 1998, Article 4: Allocation of cases to and functions of panels of Commissioners


(1) The Chairman, or a Commissioner acting on his behalf, shall allocate each case to a panel of three Commissioners.
(2) The panel shall perform the following functions on behalf of the Commissioner:
(a) hold hearings;
(b) determine ancillary appeals;
(c) take ancillary decisions;
(d) give the preliminary indication; and
(e) make the substantive determination.
(3) On appointing a panel, the Chairman, or the Commissioner acting on his behalf, shall nominate one of the panel members to act as its chairman, unless the Chairman is himself a member of the panel, in which case he shall act as the chairman of the panel.
(4) Where the person concerned is a life prisoner, the Chairman, or the Commissioner acting on his behalf, shall ensure that the case is allocated to a panel at least one of whose members is a psychiatrist or a psychologist.
(5) The single Commissioner to whom a case is allocated shall be eligible to sit as a member of the panel for that case, save that where he takes an ancillary decision he shall not sit as a member of the panel determining any ancillary appeal against that decision.
(6) Any decision of a majority of the members of the panel shall be the decision of the Commissioner.
(7) If a member of the panel to whom a case has been allocated is unavailable, the Chairman, or a Commissioner acting on his behalf, may nominate another Commissioner to take his place if he considers that that is necessary to ensure that the case is processed expeditiously.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/1859/article/4 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/northern-ireland-sentences-act-1998-sentence-review-commissioners-rules-1998/article-4
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.