“I think we face something like around a hundred unplanned courtroom closures every week.”@TheCriminalBar

“I think we face something like around a hundred unplanned courtroom closures every week.  It’s a very, very high number, and about 200 near-closures every month, affecting about 20 court buildings.” Lady Chief Justice The Rt Hon Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill to

“So as I say, when I go out and about, these estates issues are very real.  When I visited Inner London Crown Court, I was told there was no drinking water.  When I arrived at Snaresbrook, I bumped into a judge who was going down to the cells to sentence somebody because the panic alarms in court had broken down.  These are very serious problems, and of course they impact on performance, by definition.  You can’t use the course, you can’t list the case, you can’t be efficient.  But beyond that, there’s also the knock-on effect on security, and there’s a knock-on effect, frankly, on morale.  It doesn’t make you feel great if you are doing a difficult case and you’ve got a bucket next to you because the roof is leaking.”  

“What do you see the role of Lady Chief Justice is in influencing these issues in hopefully a positive manner?”  LCJ “Yes.  The long-term ambition would be to have a separate funding stream for what is an endemic, ingrained problem across the estates of the courts and tribunals in England and Wales.  That may be a pipe dream, if I’m not mixing my metaphors, but to treat it outside the annual concordant system.  Now the Lord Chancellor is very well aware of these problems and did a fantastic job in securing, as you know, for the first time, a two-year settlement.  We are very grateful to him for that £200million two-year settlement, which is obviously a significant improvement on one year.  But, in the long-term, the problems are so embedded that, you know—

“.. I’m interested in is the nature of your role in relation to the court estate. …is it part of the role that you produce a list, your judges say, you know, “My Crown Court has got this, that and the other problems,” and you feed that into the centre.  Is that how it works?” LCJ “This is all for

, it’s responsible for the running of the estates but it gets money from the treasury through the MoJ and all the rest of it.  My job, insofar as in answer to your question is it’s my job to make sure that HMCTS are aware of all the problems as they are.  If necessary, yes, if they need a list, we can provide them with one, but it’s impressing upon all those involved the importance, and your question, the consequences of a poor estate.  At a very basic level, you’ve got to keep us safe.  If you can’t do that then the courts won’t open.  If we’re safe, then is it actually acceptable?  Is it freezing cold?  Is it boiling hot?  So my job is to make sure that HMCTS in particular is aware of all the problems and to make the best case that I can in my regular discussions with the Lord Chancellor, to make sure that he’s aware of the problems.  But he definitely is aware of these problems.”

Source; X