Public Gallery Crown Courts

Yes. Swindon is a very small Crown Court. Register with the www.courtserve.net website and get access in the evening to the following day's court listing. That avoids wasting your time going to court and for example just hearing a lot of sentences handed down for people who have pleaded guilty.

I'm hoping to sit in on any domestic violence case at a local court to get a sense of the procedure. Does anyone have insight into how to find out beforehand when such cases will take place?

I've tried this but it seems to just give a list of names and times, it doesn't say what each case is actually about

Below the date and time it will say something like “for trial” or “for trial (part heard)” which means you will be joining the middle of a case or “for application” which means a hearing about the procedure for a future trial or “for plea” which means all that will happen is that the defenders will plead guilty or not guilty and some procedural orders will be made or “for sentence” in which case a Defendant who pleaded or was found guilty at an earlier hearing will be sentenced.

You won’t get the charge from the list but you might find something if you google the defendants’ names.

The law has now changed since this post. As of 2016 Ewing v Crown Court Sitting at Cardiff

Can I still go to the public gallery given the pandemic?

Can I still go to the public gallery given the pandemic?

It depends on the court and it's layout/capacity. Almost all courts and now open and running full trials. However galleries are being used for court staff/magistrates/jury members to maintain distancing so have either reduced public capacity or none. There is also a priority system in most courts so for example, if you were in the court room then a family member of a witness or IDVA wanted to be in the courtroom with a witness, you would be asked to leave. People are also not generally being allowed to wait on concourses unless they are directly related to a case so you would need to leave the building altogether and would have had a relatively unproductive trip.

disclosure: I work in a court and was involved in national working groups for getting things up and running again

And your point is what exactly? People still read older threads and even if this doesn't help the OP now, it may help someone who reads this post in the future. If you find a book on a subject that has had no major recent developments and you open it up and see the publisher's copyright notice is 3 years old you don't just put it down for that reason, do you? It's still viable information that could give others guidance.