EXETER Crown Court plans to carry on running despite a strike by barristers which is due to start on September 5.

Cases are still being listed for that week with some defendants being advised to contact solicitors rather than barristers if they want to be represented.

Barristers will also be asked which cases are not affected by the industrial action, which has been escalating gradually since June.

The action has only affected cases in which defendants are legally aided up to this point and there have been exceptions which have allowed barristers to carry on representing vulnerable clients.

Barristers stopped taking on any new legal aid work earlier this month and this has already led to large number of new cases being adjourned because defendants cannot enter pleas until they have received legal advice.

Some senior solicitors are able to work in the Crown Court but normally deal only with cases where their clients enter guilty pleas.

Both barristers and solicitors are to be asked to tell the court which cases may still be viable when the all-out action starts on September 5.

At Exeter Crown Court, the cases of two men who were accused of breaching community orders or suspended sentences was adjourned to allow them time to seek representation.

Judge Peter Johnson, the resident judge at the court, advised both to see a solicitor ‘because the barristers are not taking any new instructions’.

He adjourned both cases until September 6, the day after the strike is due to begin.

He told one of the men, Dane Baker, that it was particularly important for him to be represented because he was at risk of having his six-month suspended sentence activated.

Baker, aged 36, formerly of Chudleigh Knighton but now of Langs Road, Paignton, admitted drug driving, dangerous driving, no insurance and failing to stop when he appeared at Exeter in May.

He was jailed for six months, suspended for a year, banned from driving for a year, and ordered to do 15 days of rehabilitation activities.

Mr Thomas Faulkner, for the probation service, said there had been a low level of compliance with the order.

The sentence was imposed after the court heard that Baker was under the influence of cocaine when he led police on a chase through Newton Abbot on April 26, 2021.

He sped off when police tried to stop him and drove through red lights and on the wrong side of the road. He lost the pursuing police car but it caught up with the VW Polo he was driving in Chudleigh Knighton and he was arrested.

The pursuit had started in the village and moved into Newton Abbot, where he almost hit a parked car in Osbourne Street before heading out through St Johns Street, The Avenue, and Jetty Marsh Road.

A drug test later showed he had high levels of a metabolite of cocaine in his system.