15 August 2023
The Crown Court will continue not to cap judicial sitting days in order to maximise the number of criminal cases that can be heard, the Lord Chancellor, Alex Chalk has announced. This is the third year running the cap has been lifted
Chalk said: ‘This government knows victims want to see justice served as quickly as possible and so we are making sure Crown Court judges can hear as many cases as possible this year.’
Last year, the Crown Court worked for more than 100,000 sitting days. The latest figures show the Crown Court backlog of cases was 63,238 in May, up from 62,062 in April. The Ministry of Justice target is 53,000 cases by March 2025.
The same statistics, released in July, show a backlog of 344,154 cases in the magistrates’ courts (up from 343,206 in April) and a fall in the number of recorders able to hear criminal cases from 1,047 in 2022 to 955.
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