Courts: Buildings

(asked on 19th December 2022) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the quality of court buildings on the backlog of cases in English and Welsh courts.


Answered by
Mike Freer Portrait
Mike Freer
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
This question was answered on 9th January 2023

We will have spent over £175 million on court maintenance and repairs in the two years to April 2023, to enhance the resilience of the estate and maintain court capacity.

During the last 12 months less than 1% of available sitting days were lost due to planned and unplanned maintenance. When conducting estates works, every effort is made to minimise operational impacts as far as possible.

The HMCTS estate is kept under regular review and spending is prioritised to ensure that buildings are safe, secure, meet statutory requirements and protect continuity of service.

The pandemic caused significant disruption to the justice system and caused the outstanding caseload to build up. To ensure that courts can work at full capacity to deliver swift justice for victims and reduce the outstanding caseload we extended the tenure of 30 Nightingale courtrooms beyond the end of March 2022 and opened two new permanent super courtrooms in Manchester and Loughborough.

Reticulating Splines