When studying the 2025 rules changes last year, who else ran out of steam before getting to Appendix R?
The 15 day time periods for Appellants to send in appeals (RRS R2.1(a)) and for parties and protest committees to provide comments on appeals or other documents (RRS R4.1) have been reduced to 7 days.
A new preamble has been added to Appendix R requiring time periods to be extended when there is good reason to do so.
The reasons are shown in Submission 033-22.
The timings in appendix R have not changed for many years but electronic communication has significantly improved the speed of document transmission and reducing these times will make a significant difference to the timing of issuing appeal decisions.
The change to the preamble ensures time periods can be extended when necessary.
This is a pretty significant change.
- It may reduce the number of valid appeals (or make some appeals less well presented), and
- It will require protest committees to work significantly more quickly in responding to appeals.
If you were in Canada, we had a prescription that changed this in the previous rule book from the 15 days to 7days. We did not notice any significant change in the number of appeals filed that were late. In fact, if you actual study the time duration of an appeal, the majority of the duration is the appeals panel / committee rendering a decision.
Robert
The Submissions actually came from Australian Sailing. I don't know if they were aware of what you were doing or not.
Any guidance on this please
When writing the response, we wrote them from voice of the PC Panel. In the response we wrote "we did this .. ", "we did that .." or "The PC believes .. ", etc, etc.
When signing the response, I wrote "On behalf of the PC Panel, Angelo Guarino, Chair"
Is that what you were after?
Even my thoughts are same on the way we could respond.
The appeal or the so called apeal is not just addressing the case but is kind of a general statement on many of the other related issues.
Preparing a reply is like a community activity for all the members of PC
We would take your guidance to russel up our recipie ...I mean response !!
It's up to the protest committee, led by the chair to decide its procedures for writing and submitting comments.
Where the comments contained further facts from the notes and recollection os a panel, it would be logical for that panel and its chair to play a major part in formulating the comments. Where the comments involved some difficult rules application, the expertise of the PC chair might be appropriate.
At the end of the day the PC chair is responsible for the performance of the committee.
ISTM that once it gets complicated the PC chair will need to play a leading role.