The decision to move less serious motoring cases from Skipton Magistrates Court to one of several dedicated traffic courts may on the face of it appear to be a sensible one.

The six or so motoring offences, including speeding, insurance and licence cases, that come up at Skipton every week will now be heard at Northallerton – as long as they are guilty pleas. The contested ones may be heard locally – so as to avoid defendants from travelling long distances. Or so it is claimed.

The idea is to free magistrates from having to deal with routine speeding and other traffic matters and allow them more time to deal with “more serious offence” deemed to be more important to the local community.

But the trouble is Skipton Magistrates Court is getting quieter all the time. Its youth court has now gone to Harrogate, there is no permanent office at the court, so urgent cases are sent to Harrogate or York, and benefit fraud cases are in danger of being moved to Leeds.

The Ministry of Justice says it wants local magistrates to be able to focus on more serious offences that make a real difference to communities, victims and witnesses. But if removing business – however small – from the Skipton court results in its eventual closure, what good is that for the community?

Every year, the police run campaigns appealing for motorcyclists to obey the speed limit on North Yorkshire roads. The Skipton-based magistrates are well aware of this, and speeders who come up before them are reminded of this and are fined accordingly. They appear in the Craven Herald – because the paper is one of the few to regularly cover magistrates court – and everyone knows speeding is not to be tolerated.

From now on, those caught speeding will continue be fined, yes, but they will go unreported. And then, the next time the Ministry of Justice looks at which magistrates courts to close, it will look at Skipton and its reduced workload and simply close it. No argument.