A JUDGE has criticised a catalogue of errors by prosecutors which forced trial dates to be scrapped.

Lord Turnbull said making such changes caused inconvenience for witnesses and wasted public money.

He added there had been no apology for the mistakes and the court had been misled. This week, the High Court in Edinburgh has dealt with four applications to change trial dates.

Two alleged rapists, awaiting separate trials, appeared before the judge yesterday. One man who was about to go to trial later this month will now have to wait until January to have his full day in court. The other trial has been brought forward by a couple of weeks.

Both men are in custody.

Changing court dates can be done administratively - if Crown and defence lawyers agree - without the need for a hearing. But Lord Turnbull had insisted the reasons for the proposed changes should be discussed in open court.

The judge heard that in one case an expert's report had been overlooked because a member of the Crown Office's administrative staff had been on holiday.

The other trial had to be re-arranged because someone had failed to notice a key witness would not be available on the proposed trial date.

Lord Turnbull said he had been given no explanation of why a previous hearing had been told the Crown was ready to go to trial when it was not. "The court was misled and that is an entirely unacceptable situation," he said.

"I have not only received no explanation for that state of affairs, but I have not been tendered an apology by the advocate depute concerned."

Lord Turnbull added that public expense had been incurred unnecessarily because yesterday's hearing and the resources allocated to the previous trial dates may have been wasted.

But, he said, he had no choice but to alter the dates.