Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to Answer of 24 March 2022 to Question 129213 on Courts, how many court rooms have been in use on average in each court in England and Wales in each month of last five years.

Over the time period provided, the number of court and tribunal rooms available for use has increased by 14%.

We allocated over a quarter of a billion pounds to support court recovery in the last financial year, making court buildings safe, rolling out new technology for remote hearings, recruiting additional staff, and opening Nightingale courtrooms, of which 30 have been extended to March 2023.

The total number of rooms recorded as available for use in all courthouses and tribunal hearing centres in England & Wales since September 2020 is provided below. The data is not available prior to September 2020.

Because a number of locations contain multiple jurisdictions (i.e. include both courts and tribunals) and rooms which are used flexibly, it is not possible to provide data for courtrooms alone without artificially deflating the number of rooms actually available for court use.

The data includes all permanent and Nightingale rooms but excludes the court and other hearing rooms within the Royal Courts of Justice Group.