Prosecutors+defence counsel are working to 100% of their capacity. @TheCriminalBar

Prosecutors+defence counsel are working to 100% of their capacity

But backlog is growing over 800 per month

As measured by @MoJGovUK

as “outstanding caseload” is likely in June 2024 to be

2024 to be 72,500 On course for up to 78,000 by December 2024 For first 4 months of 2024, Crown Court resolved 3,365 fewer cases than new cases arriving in

“open caseload” for April 2024 is 68,125

“outstanding caseload” measure will be thus around 71,000 for April 2024 as

recorded 67,573 for December 2023 (published March 2024) That is 3,183 more “outstanding caseload” recorded in the official Government measure of the backlog, as confirmed by last month’s

report of 67,573 for December 2023, than today’s provisional “management information” of “open caseload” by MOJ’s courts operator

of 64,390 What is however important is the trend of an ever-widening gap over the 12 months to April 2024 between “receipts” – new cases coming in each month to the Crown Court, now at around 10,000 a month, and the number of “disposals” – cases resolved / concluded each month, which on average lately manage around 9,500 per month.

We know criminal barristers are working flat out with all those who are specialists in crime working on back to back cases. Many suffer burnout. We are not able on a daily basis to cover colleagues who through no fault of their own, can not appear as prosecution or defence counsel for trials on dates originally set often up to two years previously; trial dates are constantly moved about as judges and listing officers juggle competing demands of a system which has been in crisis mode since 2019 and struggling to cope since social distancing lifted in courts in Spring 2021.

That was when chronic shortages of criminal barristers were first laid bare. In 2023 – last year –  1,436 trials of all offences in the Crown Court were “cancelled on the hearing day” due to the absence of either a prosecution or defence advocate, a 20 fold increase on 2019 when 71 trials were similarly adjourned, as

reported, following

repeated analysis and publication of this trend, all buried within official data. Of those 1,436 trials cancelled, 252 were trials of sexual offences adjourned during to no prosecution or defence advocate being available while just 16 sexual offence trials similarly adjourned in 2019. 

Today’s volume of new case receipts pf all offences of 10,000 a month coming into the Crown Court is only back to 2017 levels, but still between 10% and 20% below levels experienced regularly most years up to 2014. It takes up to a year on average for cases of all offences to come to trial after charge.

For bailed rape cases that concluded in 2023 it took on average up to 18 months from charge to trial completion. That time is now looking for rape cases on bail to be around 2 years. But crucially for the Crown Court, the increased levels of charging rates

is reporting over the past year has still to translate fully into the higher level of new case receipts expected into the Crown Court. That increased level of charging from 2021 to 2022 began to be seen by higher case receipts throughout 2023 and rising again so far in 2024 for the data we have to April.

But further rises in charging levels in 2023 have yet to fully come through in the 2024 level of new case receipts and what lies further ahead. Without a sudden increase in criminal barrister numbers, there is little to stop the gap between case disposals and receipts growing sharply each month between now and end of 2024 and into 2025, making the current 840 average deficit per month of cases resolved over new cases arriving seem conservative.

The Crown Court backlog of “outstanding cases” is set to grow further still. And while trial dates for summer 2026 are now commonplace for some courts, 2027 trial dates are perhaps only a few months away from being set. Justice delayed really is justice denied.

Source: X