Reducing the backlog in the Crown Court

By the UK Ministry of Justice and HM Courts & Tribunals Service

  1 The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is headed by the Lord Chancellor and is accountable to Parliament for the efficient and effective functioning of the courts. Its three priorities are: to protect the public from serious offenders and improve the safety and security of our prisons; reduce reoffending; and deliver swift access to justice. HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS), an executive agency of the MoJ, reports jointly to the Lord Chancellor, Lord Chief Justice and to the Senior President of Tribunals. It is responsible for supporting the independent judiciary in the administration of criminal courts, civil courts, family courts and tribunals in England and Wales, and non-devolved tribunals in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The judiciary, headed by the Lady Chief Justice, is constitutionally independent from the government. 2 Criminal cases are heard in magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court. Cases enter the criminal justice system when a defendant is charged with an offence. The case is allocated a court date through the judicial process of listing. Cases generally go to magistrates’ courts first, where over 90% of criminal cases are dealt with. The remaining cases, usually more serious and complex offences, transfer to the Crown Court. 3 The MoJ and HMCTS measure and report on the outstanding caseload in the Crown Court, including the number of cases awaiting trial and being tried, and those awaiting sentencing. The caseload is determined by the respective rates of cases coming to the Crown Court (receipts) and completed cases (disposals). When the rate of receipts exceeds the rate of disposals, the outstanding caseload increases. The MoJ and HMCTS do not specify a minimum or optimal caseload at which the Crown Court functions most efficiently – below which there is a risk that judges and courtrooms are available but do not have enough cases to try, and above which cases on average take longer from listing to completion – because the optimal level is dependent on the nature of cases and the capacity available to hear them, both of which vary. Therefore, the MoJ does not distinguish between cases that form part of the expected caseload and additional cases that constitute a backlog. Because the MoJ has not quantified its expected caseload, we cannot quantify the backlog separately. When we are presenting data, we refer to the total number of cases as the ‘outstanding caseload’. Otherwise, we refer to it as the ‘backlog’.

4 In April 2021, the MoJ produced the Criminal Justice Action Plan that recognised a need for a whole-system approach to responding to systemic issues within the criminal justice system. It brought together work already underway across the system, focusing on three priority areas: improving timeliness, improving victim engagement and reducing backlogs. In the October 2021 Spending Review, the MoJ was provided with £477 million over 2022-23 to 2024-25 for the criminal justice system’s recovery from COVID-19, including reducing court backlogs, and a total budget settlement of £34.5 billion over the same period. 5 In October 2021, we published Reducing the backlog in criminal courts, which examined the reasons for the growth in the backlog in magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court, both before and during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.1 We reported that HMCTS had responded quickly to the impact of the pandemic, launching a recovery programme in May 2020, and successfully increasing court capacity. We concluded that, while the backlog in magistrates’ courts was expected to return to pre-pandemic levels swiftly, significant risks to reducing the backlog in the Crown Court remained, which were likely to persist beyond 2024. Scope of this work 6 We undertook this investigation in response to the Crown Court backlog reaching its highest ever level. This report describes what action the MoJ, HMCTS and other parts of the criminal justice system have taken to address the backlog of cases in the Crown Court. It examines: • the scale, nature and impact of the Crown Court backlog; • the MoJ’s and HMCTS’s understanding of the impact of actions to reduce the Crown Court backlog; and • how the MoJ and HMCTS are attempting to manage the Crown Court backlog. 7 We refer to, but did not examine in detail, the work of other parts of the criminal justice system, such as the judiciary, police, magistrates’ courts and HM Prison and Probation Service, that are relevant to managing the Crown Court backlog. We do not comment on the wider reform programmes in the system such as the court reform programme, which is the focus of our 2023 report Progress on the courts and tribunals reform programme. 2 We do not comment on other major projects unless directly relevant to the Crown Court backlog. We do not seek to examine and report on value for money of the MoJ’s and HMCTS’s work to date to reduce the backlog.   

London: The National Audit Office (NAO) , 2024. 54p.