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Written question asked by Steve Reed (Labour) on Wednesday, 15 December 2021, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 5 January 2022 (named day). It was answered by James Cartlidge (Conservative) on Wednesday, 5 January 2022 on behalf of the Ministry of Justice.


Recorders

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many Recorders have been sitting each year from 2015 to 2021; and for how many days each Recorder sat.

Answer

Table 1 shows how many Recorders sat and the total number of days sat by Recorders, in each year between 2015 and 2020. Figures are for England and Wales. Data can only be supplied to December 2020 because the 2021 data are not yet finalised.

Table 1. The number of Recorders who sat, and the total number of Recorder sitting days, England and Wales, 2015 to 2020.

Year

Number of recorders who sat

Total Sitting Days

2015

989

23,634

2016

1,057

30,380

2017

953

31,902

2018

997

25,273

2019

844

17,499

2020

789

16,514

Source: Judicial Itineraries System

We are making use of fee-paid judiciary, including those sitting in retirement. For a second year in a row, we have increased the maximum number of sitting days for all Recorders from 30 to 80 days. This year, our planned recruitment has brought in additional judges since October 2021, which is helping us to further increase our activity for the rest of the financial year.

Notes for the table:

1) These figures represent only the days sat in all courts and chambers (including the Royal Courts of Justice). Recorders undertake a range of other functions outside the courtroom that are not shown here.

2) The data for each Recorder sitting has been extracted from a live system and so is slightly different to the published data on sitting days. This can be found in the Royal Court of Justice sitting days tables: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/civil-justice-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2021

3) Please note the Judicial Itinerary tool, from which each Recorder's sitting day was extracted, was deployed in April 2015 so this data is missing for Jan-Mar 2015. Therefore our 2015 figure only covers Apr to Dec of that year.

4) Only Recorders sitting in the capacity of Recorder are included. Recorders sittings as a Deputy High Court Judge are excluded.


Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
93763
Session
2021-22
Related items
Recorders: Part-time Employment
Friday, 28 January 2022
Written questions
House of Commons
Subjects
Recorders
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk