Addressing a meeting of the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee last week, she said her predecessor Lord Thomas had warned about the need for improvement back in 2019, and ‘things have not changed’. Cardiff needs ‘a fit-for-purpose building bringing together civil, family, public, law, and tribunal work,’ she said.
The courts estate in Wales as a whole needs repairs worth about £1.3bn. However, the criminal cases backlog is going down, Baroness Carr said, with Wales ‘disposing of more Crown Court cases than it receives’, and disposal times in civil and family cases above the national averages.
Baroness CarThere is ‘an overwhelming operational case for a new civil justice centre in Cardiff,’ Baroness Carr, the Lady Chief Justice, has told MPsr also revealed Welsh is spoken substantively in about 1,400 hearings (8%) per year, while almost half (48%) of circuit judges and 11% of magistrates (50% in north west Wales) speak Welsh.
