The government has launched a recruitment campaign to find magistrates in several counties across England and Wales in a bid to increase new appointees from 1,500 to 2,500 over the next three years.

Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer will head the £4m campaign, which aims to encourage more young people and ethnic minorities to become magistrates.

It will focus primarily on the north east, Derbyshire and Hertfordshire, where the numbers are lowest, and will include a free hotline and ads on buses and on the radio.

Only 22 out of 457 magistrates in Hertfordshire were from ethnic minority groups, it claimed.

One of the main difficulties the government faces in recruiting people from ethnic communities, according to Lord Falconer, is the “generally-held but erroneous view that to become a magistrate you have to be white, middle-class, middle-aged and professional”.

No formal qualifications are required to become a magistrate.