Magistrates' Courts: Standards
(asked on 26th January 2022) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the current backlog is in the number of Magistrate's court cases; and how long it currently takes for a case to be heard in a Magistrate's court (a) nationally and (b) in York.
The table below sets out the outstanding cases a) nationally and b) in York. Some of this data is available publicly through the hyperlinks in the table.
| Crown Court | Magistrates’ Court | Family Court (combined Public and Private, by child) |
Total Outstanding Across England and Wales | Data published in Table C1, in Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly. | Data published in Table M1, in Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly. | Data published in HMCTS Management Information |
Outstanding cases in York | Data published in Criminal Court datasets received, disposed and outstanding tool | For York magistrates’ court, at the end of Q3 2021, there were 1,122 outstanding criminal cases (Extracted from Criminal Court Quarterly Statistics: Data and Analysis, Ministry of Justice). | See attached table (Family courts statistics, Analysis and Performance, HMCTS (PQ 112618)) |
We have interpreted the question about length of time for a case to be heard as linked to timeliness. Timeliness figures show the average amount of time (days or weeks) there are between an offence being committed and the corresponding case beginning its first listing (for the Magistrates’ Court) and its main hearing (in the Crown Court). For the family courts, timeliness figures show the average amount of time between a case’s receipt and its disposal. The table below sets this out a) nationally and b) in York.
| Crown Court | Magistrates’ Court | Family Court (combined Public and Private) |
Average Timeliness Across England and Wales (days) | See attached table (Criminal court statistics, Data and Analysis, Ministry of Justice (PQ 112617, PQ 112619)). | See attached table (Criminal court statistics, Data and Analysis, Ministry of Justice (PQ 112617, PQ 112619)). | See attached table (Family courts statistics, Analysis and Performance, HMCTS (PQ 112618)). |
Average Timeliness Across York Cases (days) | See attached table (Criminal court statistics, Data and Analysis, Ministry of Justice (PQ 112617, PQ 112619)). | See attached table (Criminal court statistics, Data and Analysis, Ministry of Justice (PQ 112617, PQ 112619)). | See attached table (Family courts statistics, Analysis and Performance, HMCTS (PQ 112618)). |