The Magistrates' Courts Rules 1981

Requirements to be complied with before release

86.—(1) Where a magistrates' court has fixed the amount in which a person (including any surety) is to be bound by a recognizance, the recognizance may be entered into—

(a) in the case of a surety in connection with bail in criminal proceedings where the accused is in a prison or other place of detention, before the governor or keeper of the prison or place as well as before the persons mentioned in section 8(4)(a) of the Bail Act 1976;

(b) in any other case, before a justice of the peace, a justices' clerk, a police officer who either is of the rank of inspector or above or is in charge of a police station or, if the person to be bound is in a prison or other place of detention, before the governor or keeper of the prison or place.

(2) The clerk of a magistrates' court which has fixed the amount in which a person (including any surety) is to be bound by a recognizance or, under section 3(5) or (6) of the Bail Act 1976, has imposed any requirement to be complied with before a person's release on bail shall issue a certificate in the prescribed form showing the amount and conditions, if any, of the recognizance or, as the case may be, containing a statement of the requirement; and a person authorised to take the recognizance or do anything in relation to the compliance with such requirement shall not be required to take or do it without production of such a certificate as aforesaid.

(3) If any person proposed as a surety for a person committed to custody by a magistrates' court produces to the governor or keeper of the prison or other place of detention in which the person so committed is detained a certificate in the prescribed form to the effect that he is acceptable as a surety, signed by any of the justices composing the court or the clerk of the court and signed in the margin by the person proposed as surety, the governor or keeper shall take the recognizance of the person so proposed.

(4) Where the recognizance of any person committed to custody by a magistrates' court or of any surety of such a person is taken by any person other than the court which committed the first-mentioned person to custody, the person taking the recognizance shall send it to the clerk of that court:

Provided that, in the case of a surety, if the person committed has been committed to the Crown Court for trial or under any of the enactments mentioned in rule 17(1), the person taking the recognizance shall send it to the appropriate officer of the Crown Court.