Courts: Closures
(asked on 28th October 2019) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) Crown (b) magistrates' courts closed in each year since 2010.
The table below provides the number of Crown court closures and Magistrates’ court closures since 2010.
Financial year | Crown Court closures | Magistrates’ Court closures |
2010-2011 | 0 | 1 |
2011-2012 | 0 | 83 |
2012-2013 | 0 | 5 |
2013-2014 | 0 | 5 |
2014-2015 | 1 | 4 |
2015-2016 | 0 | 6 |
2016-2017 | 4* | 41* |
2017-2018 | 0 | 13 |
2018-2019 | 1 | 4 |
1 April 2019 to 29 October 2019 | 0 | 3 |
The information above does not include local integrations.
*Includes Dolgellau Crown and Magistrates Court, and Bury St Edmunds Crown and Magistrates’ Court, these two sites are logged in both columns.
The decision to close any court is not taken lightly – it only happens following full public consultation and only when effective access to justice can be maintained. Courts that have closed were either underused, dilapidated or too close to one another.
Since 2015/6 HMCTS has raised approximately £129m from the sales of surplus buildings to reinvest in the wider reform programme.