Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what information his Department holds on the average length of time it takes for a court case to be processed and concluded in (a) Basildon, (b) Essex, and (c) England.

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on the time taken ‘at court’ in the magistrates’ courts and Crown Court for Essex in the ‘Magistrates’ courts timeliness tool’ and the ‘End-to-end timeliness tool’ (Crown Court).

Magistrates ‘at court’ time refers to the number of days from first listing to completion at the magistrates’ court and for the Crown Court it refers to the time from first listing at the magistrates’ court to completion at the Crown Court.

Data for the Essex Local Criminal Justice Board (LCJB) can be found using the ‘geographic area’ filter - Criminal court statistics - GOV.UK

LCJB is the lowest geographic level of our published Accredited Official Statistics for timeliness. Our published timeliness metrics are produced at a sufficiently 'high' level to reduce the volatility and fluctuations associated with low volumes of cases i.e. using court level data. As a result, we are unable to provide timeliness data for individual courts in Basildon.

The publication provides data for ‘England and Wales’ but does not contain a breakdown for England alone. When looking at data for England, the median time spent ‘at court’ across magistrates’ courts was 0 days for the year ending September 2025. This is due to the high proportion of Single Justice Procedure cases which commence and conclude on the same day. For the Crown Court, the median time spent ‘at court’ was 172 days for the same period.