The buildings, in Fleetwood, Telford, Chichester and Cirencester, comprise 11 courtrooms covering criminal, family and civil cases. Their conversion to a permanent status marks the end of the Nightingale initiative, which converted hotels, offices and conference centres into a total of 60 temporary courtrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Law Society president Mark Evans described the move as ‘sensible’, but urged the government to ‘ensure there are enough judges, court staff and lawyers to work on the cases.
‘To bring down the backlogs and ensure truly swift and fair justice, the government must focus on efficiencies and sustained investment across the entire justice system, including reducing the number of cases coming into the courts.’
Ministers have stepped up efforts to bring the backlog of 80,000 cases down, increasing funding for Crown Courts to sit a record 111,250 days this financial year. The Lord Chancellor David Lammy has proposed radical cuts to jury trials, under which slightly less than half of trials currently heard by a jury would instead be heard by magistrates or a judge sitting alone.
Last week, however, the Institute for Government reported that cutting jury trials—a proposal that is widely opposed within the legal profession—would reduce the Crown Court workload by less than 2%. The institute explains one reason for this is juries will continue to be used in the most serious trials, which tend to take the longest to complete.
Hearing more cases in the magistrates’ court, on the other hand, could save 7%-10%—with the caveat that this would depend on a large number of cases being retained in magistrates’ courts, according to the institute’s report, ‘Trial and error? The impact of restricting jury trials on court demand’.
