Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many confirmed cases of covid-19 there have been among (a) staff, (b) judiciary, (c) jurors and (d) other attendees at each court between 19 February 2021 and the most recent date for which that information is available.

We follow all Public Health and Government COVID-secure guidelines and have put measures in place to keep all court and tribunal users safe. When Government or Public Health guidance changes, our measures are updated, an approach which is endorsed by Public Health England and Public Health Wales.

The table below sets out the number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases reported to HMCTS among (a) staff, (b) judiciary, (c) jurors and (d) users between 19 February 2021 and 24 February 2021. Due to the time taken for individuals to take a test, receive test results, and then communicate this to HMCTS (which information is then recorded against the date initially reported), further cases may be added to the table after the time of publishing. The table only includes court locations within the HMCTS estate where we have learnt about a new positive case within the dates given above. All other court sites have not reported any new cases between these dates.

HMCTS employs around 19,800 staff (payroll and non-payroll). There are around 19,400 judicial office holders covering all jurisdictions, including coroners and magistrates. The population of jurors fluctuates each week, but we estimate around 4,000 jurors attend weekly.

For staff and agency staff in HMCTS as a whole (including tribunals), positive test rates are falling in line with national numbers. The incident rate amongst staff is trending around the national average. As at 24 February, the HMCTS staff positive incident rate is 124.6 cases per 100,000, compared to 100.4 cases per 100,000 in the UK.

Comparability with national statistics will be affected by our staff locations (staff are not evenly distributed across the country) and when the numbers are changing rapidly the difference between incident date (our figures) and date of positive test (national figures) becomes relevant. However, overall, the trend is not dissimilar to national averages over time and prevalence rates amongst staff have been trending below the national average. Accordingly, there should be no assumption that a positive case indicates that there has been transmission within a court building.

Note that courts without any confirmed positive cases in the time period are not listed.