Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average cost is of a transcript for a (a) court and (b) tribunal hearing.

HMCTS contracts with external suppliers to provide court transcripts. Management information from these suppliers for the period January to December 2024 was extracted as follows:

• Total number of court and tribunal transcripts produced: 45,178
• The average cost of a transcript order between January and December 2024 based on the transcripts produced: £117.00 (excl. VAT)

Court and tribunal hearings differ significantly in length (from hearings that last less than a day to trials that can last several weeks or months) and transcript costs are in proportion to the volume of audio that must be transcribed and checked on a case-by-case basis. The cost may also vary depending on whether the transcript is new of a copy and the speed of delivery requested.

While costs of shorter hearings may be lower, transcripts of full hearings or trials can incur charges of £25,000 or more. Therefore, the average cost calculated above using supplier data is not reflective of the full range of court and tribunal hearings.

We continue to monitor how AI develops and how it could be used to provide access to court transcripts in future, however, it is important that court transcripts have an extremely high accuracy rate.