Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent steps his Department has taken to help clear the backlog of cases in rural courts.

We continue to take action to tackle the impact the pandemic has had on our criminal justice system, and we are seeing the impact of our actions.

The backlog in the Crown Court has reduced from around 61,000 cases in June 2021 to around 58,700 cases at the end of November 2021 and in the magistrates’ court, the caseload is close to recovering to pre-pandemic levels. In the civil courts, volumes of final hearings increased from around half of pre-Covid levels in June 2020 to around 80% in May 2021. While the family courts’ sitting day figures for 2021 are yet to be published, 2020 saw us sit our highest ever number of days. The volume of disposals also increased significantly in both public and private family law between Q2 2020 and Q2 2021. In public law there were 6,229 disposals and in private law there were 26,672 disposals in Q2 2021, a 20% and 23% increase on Q2 2020 respectively.

We have continued to ensure our court buildings are safe, rolled out new technology for remote hearings, recruited additional staff and we will be retaining 32 Nightingale Crown Court rooms until the end of March 2022. Furthermore, we are now extending magistrates’ court sentencing powers from 6 to 12 months for a single Triable Either Way offence to allow more cases to be heard in the magistrates' court. This measure will provide vital additional capacity in the Crown Courts to drive down the backlog of cases over the coming years. We estimate that this will save nearly 2,000 Crown Court sitting days per year.

To ensure the regions most at need get the resources required, we are working with the judiciary to move cases across regional boundaries to areas with spare capacity where appropriate, and using a national, flexible pool of judges for regions to draw from as required. We are also taking steps to extend Nightingale Court arrangements, on a case-by-case basis, dependant on local need.

We are investing £477 million in the Criminal Justice System over the next three years to help reduce the backlog and deliver the swift access to justice that victims deserve.