Giving his annual press conference this week, Lord Burnett said he had ‘recently started authorising a number of retired Crown Court judges to sit in retirement in anticipation of there being a step-change increase in the number of Crown Court trials that we hear once…the vaccine is available and we can return to something which does not involve social distancing’.
It is common for judges to sit in retirement as fee-paid judges in the district and county courts, but this has not until now been required for the Crown Court.
Lord Burnett said the Court Service is recruiting an extra 1,600 people to support recovery from COVID-19. However, he highlighted ‘a significant shortfall in district judges’, noting that the recruitment competition currently running would not produce new judges until early summer 2021.
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