Judges congregate in Westminster Abbey before their Annual Service of Thanksgiving on October 1, 2012 in London, England
(Picture: Getty Images)Increasing the capacity of the courts needs to be a government priority over the next decade. Earlier this week the BBC rightly drew attention to delays in the Crown Court and their devasting impact on those waiting for justice.
Since the start of the pandemic, the Government has started to invest more in the courts. The Government is focused on short-term recovery. Delays caused by the pandemic are still causing major issues, for example, the number of cases that have been outstanding for a year or more in the Crown Court reached 25 per cent of the overall outstanding caseload in 2021. The Government’s target of reducing the backlog to 53,000 by March 2025 is designed to get the Crown Court operating as it was pre-Covid.
