25 February 2026
The Magistrates’ Association has flagged its dual ‘recruitment and retention’ problem, while welcoming the Lord Chancellor David Lammy’s commitment this week to an extra £247m funding for the Crown and magistrates’ court
David Ford, national chair of the association, hailed Lammy’s ‘big vote of confidence in magistrates’. In order to ‘maximise the success of these changes’, Ford called for a ‘long-term’ plan to recruit and retain magistrates from all walks of life without them being ‘left out of pocket’ for volunteering, and investment in salaries for legal advisor roles, as ‘good legal advisers leave our courts for better-paid roles elsewhere in the public sector’.
