Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what is the average time taken to appoint a volunteer magistrate from the point of application to the applicant sitting in Court.

In January 2022, the Ministry of Justice launched an updated magistrate recruitment and selection process alongside a marketing strategy to increase the number and diversity of applicants to the magistracy. As part of this work, a number of changes were made to improve the efficiency and timeliness of the full process. These include the introduction of a new online qualifying assessment in February 2023, which will result in quicker recruitment of magistrates. As applications under the new system are still being processed, we are not yet able to calculate the average time from application to appointment.