24 June 2022
The Bar Council has mapped out active and closed courts, legal aid providers, and barristers across England and Wales, highlighting geographical discrepancies in access to justice
The resulting, live, interactive ‘Access to Justice dashboard’, launched as the legal profession marked Justice Week 2022, reveals a ‘postcode lottery’, the Bar Council said. It highlights how 239 courts (43% of the total) have closed in England and Wales in the past 12 years, 373 parliamentary constituencies and 155 local authority areas have no active local court.
Bar Council chair, Mark Fenhalls QC said: ‘The closure of hundreds of courts over the last decade means that people must travel further and for longer and waiting lists and backlogs have grown.
‘We urgently need a political commitment to fund capacity across the justice system. Technology may be able to help on the fringes, but the government urgently needs to appoint more judges in all jurisdictions, commit to a long-term rebuilding of crumbling court estate, and widen access to legal aid.’
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