CHESTER is regaining its Nightingale Court, with a city centre hotel having converted rooms so jury trials can be held there.

The Crowne Plaza hotel on Trinity Street, located next to the ongoing Northgate Development, is due to host its first ever court case on Monday, June 14 before Honorary Recorder of Chester Judge Steven Everett.

It will be the first Nightingale Court case heard in Chester since the closure of the previous venue at Chester Town Hall last month.

Chester Town Hall had previously been in operation as a venue to hear crown court cases for seven months at its two courtrooms.

Courtroom one was the traditional magistrates courtroom up until 1991, which in recent years had been used for conferences and seminars, but more famously was where ITV's Coronation Street filmed the trial of brothers David Platt and Nick Tilsley in 2019.

Courtroom two was the Town Hall's Assembly room, by some way the larger of the two rooms. It was where the Queen and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, had lunch following a visit to Storyhouse in June 2018.

It is understood the new Chester Nightingale Court has two courtrooms in place, and has the capacity for trials to be heard with a jury present, with relevant Covid safety measures.

Court hearings will, as before, be heard in addition to cases at Chester Crown Court in efforts to reduce the ongoing court case backlog, which was exacerbated by the Covid pandemic.

While defendants and complainants do not usually face as long a wait to have their cases heard in the Chester area as elsewhere in the country, it can still be many months or even years from a defendant's first appearance in magistrates court to the conclusion of their case at crown court.