Record Crown Court backlog set to get even worse, top MoJ boss says

In Yorkshire, 6,661 cases were waiting to be dealt with, while Leeds Crown Court has the fourth highest backlog of any in the country, with 2,135 waiting to be heard as of the end of September, figures released last month showed.

Crown Courts deal with the most serious crimes, including murder and rape, where Magistrates do not have sufficient sentencing capabilities.

Due to the backlogs being twice as high as they were five years ago, the average time taken for justice to be served has increased sharply, with average waits for a case going from Magistrates to Crown Court rising from 158 days to 279 days, and the number of people waiting more than a year has risen to 18,000.

Opening the oral evidence to the inquiry yesterday, the chairman of the select committee Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: “Long waits for cases is having a very serious effect on defendants, witnesses and victims, including on victims’ mental wellbeing and an increasing number of defendants spending long periods on remand awaiting trial.”

Dame Romeo said prior to the pandemic the caseload was at an historic low, but that Covid measures meant the number of cases waiting to be heard soared to around 58,000, at which point the Ministry of Justice set a target to get cases down to 53,000 by March of this year.

This was thwarted in part by industrial action by the Criminal Bar Association, by increasingly complex cases, and by additional ‘receipts’ of cases, with more cases being sent to Crown Courts, in part because of an increase in the number of police officers able to investigate crimes.

A number of measures have been put in place to help reduce this, the committee heard, including: improving the physical estate of the MoJ to ensure court buildings themselves are fit for purpose; recruiting more circuit judges and recorders; and in November increasing the sentencing powers of Magistrates from six months to 12, to keep more cases from Crown Courts in the first instance.

But further, more radical measures are expected to be recommended as part of an ongoing review of the criminal justice system by retired judge Sir Brian Leveson, who previously led the inquiry into issues of British press culture.

This is expected to include looking at so called ‘intermediate courts’ where cases too serious for magistrates’ courts but not serious enough for the Crown Court could be heard by a judge, flanked by magistrates. It will also examine giving Magistrates broader powers, and look at how technology can be better integrated into the system.

Dame Romeo said: “The reason we are doing all of this is that we recognise the real-world impacts that delays have on victims. It’s very serious. The Lord Chancellor and the Government have been very clear that they want us to focus on this.

“Fundamentally the demand on the system is greater than our capacity to dispose of that demand. So receipts are increasing significantly and the ability to dispose of that has not kept pace.

“What the Government has recognised is that even with all the money in the world, at this point where we are, and what’s happening with the trajectory, it would be very difficult to get back into line.

“That’s why we’ve asked Sir Brian Leveson to look at some bigger reforms.

Nick Goodwin is the Chief Executive of HMCTS, and told the committee: “There are financial restraints in terms of how hard you can sit the courts, but they have been sitting very very hot.

“In June last year they disposed of over 10,500 cases, and that is an incredibly high amount by recent standards, I think it’s the highest amount since 2017.

“We’d like to do more clearly, but even if you were to do more the demand coming into the system is still outstripping the capacity of the system.”

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