The published Impact Assessment for the Courts and Tribunals Bill shows that the structural reform package in the Bill is expected to reduce incoming demand on Crown Court time by almost 20%. The Impact Assessment can be found here: (Courts and Tribunals Bill (Structural Criminal Court) Impact Assessment).

The Impact Assessment for the Courts and Tribunals Bill shows that the structural reform package in the Bill is expected to reduce incoming demand on the Crown Court by almost 20%. It also shows that reforms will support the rule of law by improving access to justice through increased case disposals, strengthening confidence in legal institutions, and supporting a more effective and resilient justice system.

The Impact Assessment can be found, attached.

Information on the number of court sitting days sat in each individual Crown Court Centre in England and Wales for each financial year from 2019-2020 to 2024-25 is provided in the attached table.

This Government inherited a justice system in crisis. There are over 80,000 criminal cases waiting to be heard in the Crown Court and it is only by pulling every lever we have – investment, efficiency and reform – that we can we turn the tide on the backlog and begin to deliver faster and fairer justice.

That is why we are delivering record financial investment. We have uncapped Crown Court sitting days for 2026/27, which means there is no longer a financial limit on the amount of work the Crown Court can undertake; and we have announced additional funding of up to £34 million a year for criminal legal aid advocates and £92 million per year for criminal legal aid solicitor fee schemes. £287 million is being invested in both IT improvements and the court estate itself, to deliver vital repairs and digital upgrades to court buildings and wider IT Systems.

The Ministry of Justice regularly publishes data on the average amount of time a case spends being heard and the average time taken for a case to reach completion following receipt at the Crown Court, as part of the Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly: Criminal court statistics - GOV.UK

Data on the average amount of time a case spends being heard (in hours) is published in the “Crown Court average waiting and hearing time tool”, which can be filtered by trial type, including jury trial (01. Not guilty plea & 02. Trials total) and region.

Data on the average time taken for a case to reach completion (in days) following receipt at the Crown Court is published in the ‘End-to-end timeliness tool’ (Crown Court) which be filtered by Local Criminal Justice Board (LCJB).

LCJB and region are the lowest available geographic level of our published Accredited Official Statistics for timeliness and hearing time respectively. Our published metrics are produced at a sufficiently 'high' level of geography to reduce the volatility and fluctuations associated with low volumes of cases.

The Ministry of Justice retired use of the Crown Court Information data tool in 2024 because we rationalised outputs to avoid duplicating published measures, and moved towards other software solutions. Much of the data previously available in the tool and some additional metrics and breakdowns are published in detailed pivot tools and dashboards as set out below.

The Ministry of Justice routinely publishes data on the Crown Court caseload, plea, and trial effectiveness as part of the Accredited Official Statistics series Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly. This includes detailed data tools which provide breakdowns by available geography: Criminal court statistics - GOV.UK

For a dashboard view of the data, the department has published the Criminal Justice System Data Delivery Dashboard. This includes a range of performance metrics, including data on trials that do not proceed in the ‘Victim engagement’ section of the dashboard: Home - CJS Dashboard.

Where appropriate, early guilty pleas (EGPs) can have benefits for both the administration of justice (by saving court time) and victims (by saving them from having to give potentially traumatic evidence).

Data on early guilty pleas (EGPs) is published as part of the Criminal Justice System Delivery Data Dashboard. This defines an EGP as a guilty plea entered by a defendant at any time prior to trial. The data can be broken down by Local Criminal Justice Board, in the section ‘Early guilty plea rate (%)’.

Charge to case completion at court - CJS Dashboard

In Part 2 of the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts, Sir Brian Leveson made a series of recommendations aimed at strengthening the incentives for defendants who intend to plead guilty to do so at the first reasonable opportunity. We are carefully considering these and the additional remaining recommendations from Sir Brian’s Review and will set out a full response in due course.

The Government inherited a justice system in crisis - with a record Crown Court caseload and victims facing intolerable delays for justice. That is why the Government asked Sir Brian Leveson to undertake an Independent Review of the Criminal Courts and make recommendations for how to restore stability and confidence in the criminal courts.

Sir Brian’s report set out a blueprint for pragmatic structural reform in our criminal courts and made clear that it is only by pulling every lever we have – investment, efficiency and reform – that we can we turn the tide on the backlog and begin to swifter justice for all. The Courts and Tribunals Bill is the first step to putting the reform blueprint into law.

We are currently considering Sir Brian’s remaining recommendations and will publish our full response in due course. In the meantime, the Deputy Prime Minister has already announced several initial measures we are taking forward to drive efficiency, including supporting the judiciary to undertake ‘blitz courts’ (where courts list similar cases together over a short period of time – concentrating court resources and the expertise required), rolling out case coordinators in every Crown Court centre and supporting the Lady Chief Justice to publish the first ever National Listing Framework. We are exploring the use of new AI technologies, including supporting the judiciary to pilot a new listing assistant, to improve the efficiency of how cases are scheduled.

Alongside structural reforms and inefficiencies, we are also delivering record financial investment. We have uncapped Crown Court sitting days for 2026/27, which means there is no longer a financial limit on the amount of work the Crown Court can undertake; we have announced additional funding of up to £34 million a year for criminal legal aid advocates, and we recently laid a statutory instrument to invest £3.5 million of this funding in preparatory fees. This is in addition to the significant uplifts to criminal legal aid solicitor fees this Government has already implemented - which will be worth around an additional £116 million per year once in steady state.

The Department publishes Crown Court open caseload projections annually. The current release (from December 2025) is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-population-projections-2025-to-2030. We do not have equivalent projections at a regional level.

The Courts and Tribunals Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 25 February 2026. That week, we also announced that there will be no financial limit to the amount of work the Crown Court can take on for the next financial year – in 2026-27, we are enabling the Crown Court to work at full judicial and court system capacity.

We published an impact factsheet alongside the Bill, assessing how the Government’s financial commitments on sitting days could affect the Crown Court open caseload under different scenarios. This can be found at: Courts and Tribunals Bill - GOV.UK. Only by pulling every lever we have – investment, efficiency and structural reform – can we turn the tide on the open caseload.

For data on the latest backlog volume, see the ‘Crown Court Receipts, Disposals and Open cases tool’ in the Criminal Court Statistics quarterly release: Criminal court statistics quarterly: January to March 2026 - GOV.UK.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) uses the Digital Audio Recording, Transcription and Storage (DARTS) system across the Crown Court estate to record hearings. HMCTS and its suppliers hold various forms of information relating to DARTS maintenance and performance.

However, HMCTS does not maintain or validate data on recording failures (or the percentage of hearings affected by such failures) per se, whether specifically about the Crown Court centre at Exeter or generally.

An ineffective trial is one that does not go ahead on the scheduled trial date, so a further listing is required. This can be due to action or inaction by one or more of the prosecution, the defence, or the court.

The Ministry of Justice collates and publishes data on the volume of trials that were ineffective at the Crown Court including reasons in the ‘Trial effectiveness at the criminal courts tool’ on a quarterly basis. The latest period included covers January to March 2026. Data is available at a Crown Court level using the filter ‘crown_court_and_magistrates_lja’.Criminal court statistics - GOV.UK

We asked Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts to make recommendations to tackle inefficiencies within the criminal courts, including the causes of ineffective trials. We will publish our full response to Sir Brian’s review in due course, but we have already taken steps to deliver swifter justice through significant investment in the system – in record sitting days (increasing judicial capacity), court buildings and technology, and in legal professionals with significant investment in legal aid. In addition, the Deputy Prime Minister has already announced several initial measures we are taking forward to drive efficiency and reduce ineffective trials.

This includes the introduction of case coordinators in every Crown Court centre and supporting the Lady Chief Justice to publish the first ever National Listing Framework and pilot an AI Listing Assistant. We are also working with the Department for Transport and local authorities to expand the number of areas where prison transport vans can use bus lanes to reduce traffic delays - reducing wasted court time.

Part 1 of the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts considered the potential impact of reclassifying certain triable either way offences as summary only offences. Sir Brian Leveson’s analysis indicated that reclassification, together with restricting the right to elect for a Crown Court trial, would reduce demand on the Crown Court, but would not be sufficient to address the scale of the backlog.

Reclassification also raises significant operational concerns, including impacts on law enforcement powers. Sir Brian recognised that the Government may wish to go further to achieve the savings needed for our criminal courts to continue functioning and, as a result, the Government decided to proceed with reforms to remove the right to elect for a Crown Court trial for all triable either way offences, and to introduce a power to increase magistrates’ court sentencing powers.

The Ministry of Justice publishes magistrates’ court data on prosecutions and resulting outcomes for rape offences by age of the defendant. This can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.

Although youth courts are not separately identifiable, the published statistics can be filtered to identify cases where the defendant was under the age of 18.

We are two years in, and I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we will come forward with announcements in that area shortly.

In their 2024 manifesto, the Government made a promise to set up specialist rape courts in every Crown court location. Two years on, how many have been set up?

The Crown Court operates from 84 buildings across England and Wales, with a core estate of over 500 courtrooms. The summary table below sets out the average number of courtrooms allocated for primary use by the Crown Court that were not sitting each month in the last year. The table in the attached spreadsheet then sets out the equivalent number of assigned courtrooms that were not sitting on each day in the last year. As set out in published stats here, the Crown Court sat a total of 110,647 days in 2025-26. By comparison, the Crown Court sat 107,921 days in 2024-25; 107,704 in 2023-24; 100,932 in 2022-23; 98,372 in 2021-22.

It is important to emphaise that it would be extremely unusual to have 100% courtroom utilisation in any jurisdiction, not least because the system needs to flex at short notice to meet unexpected capacity loss, cope with surges in demand, or accommodate overrunning trials, and to allow for additional public and press access. As such, it would be operationally unviable to risk sitting at that 100% utilisation.

In any event, there is also a fundamental difference between system capacity and physical capacity. Running courtrooms requires not just available physical space (and associated facilities, like jury retirement rooms, waiting areas, and custody cells) but depends on numbers of judges, court staff, and sufficient numbers of barristers and solicitors to enable cases to run.

That is why we are investing long term in the workforce and system capacity. We have invested a record £2.78 billion in our courts and tribunals service in 2026/27, including uncapped sitting days in the Crown Court for 2026/27 so that it can run at maximum system capacity. We have also announced additional investment in the workforce and legal professionals, including an additional £92 million per year for criminal legal aid solicitor fees, up to £34 million per year extra for criminal legal aid advocates, and match-funded criminal law pupillages and expanded the number of criminal barristers.

This financial investment is just one element of our work to tackle the crisis in our criminal courts as it is only by pulling all levers at our disposal – financial investment, modernisation, and pragmatic structural reform – that we can put the criminal courts onto a genuinely sustainable footing.

Source System - HMCTS Management Information (Courtroom Planner)

1 - Data extracted from Courtroom Planner on 18th June 2026, for courtrooms allocated to the Crown Court.

2 - Data is based on individual courtroom in the Crown Court estate. These are rooms whose primary use has been assigned to the Crown Court, not necessarily in a Crown Court venue and excludes rooms that were unavailable to sit for another reason.

3 - Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and is the best data that is available.

4 - Data are management information and are not subject to the same level of checks as official statistics.

5 - Data are taken from a live management information system and can change over time and for that reason might differ slightly from any previously published information.

6 - Data has not been cross referenced with case files.

7 - Crown courts do not normally sit on bank holidays or weekends so these have been removed.

8 – The data released in PQ3508 for April 2025 has been updated, with the revised version showing a slight reduction in instances classified as “not used.” The change is due to late reporting.

We have interpreted your questions as asking how many magistrates’ and Crown Court trials were ineffective (did not go ahead on the scheduled trial start date and so a further listing is required) in the past three months, and the reasons those trials were ineffective.

The Ministry of Justice publishes quarterly data on the volume of trials that were ineffective at the magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court including reasons in the ‘Trial effectiveness at the criminal courts tool’. The latest period included covers October to December 2025 and can be found here: Criminal court statistics - GOV.UK.

An ineffective trial can be caused by a number of factors, including action or inaction by one or more of the prosecution, the defence or the court.

We asked Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts to make recommendations to tackle inefficiencies within the criminal courts, including the causes of ineffective trials. We have taken steps to deliver swifter justice through significant investment in the system – in record sitting days (increasing judicial capacity), court buildings and technology, and in legal professionals with significant investment in legal aid. In addition, the Deputy Prime Minister has announced several measures to drive efficiency and reduce ineffective trials. This includes the introduction of case coordinators in every Crown Court centre and supporting the Lady Chief Justice to publish the first ever National Listing Framework and pilot an AI Listing Assistant. We are also working with the Department for Transport and local authorities to expand the number of areas where prison transport vans can use bus lanes to reduce traffic delays - reducing wasted court time.

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on trial effectiveness in the Criminal Court Statistics release in the ‘Trial effectiveness at the criminal courts tool’. This tool contains data on both the magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court and covers the period 2010 to 2025: Criminal court statistics - GOV.UK.

An ineffective trial is one which does not go ahead on the scheduled trial start date and where a further listing is required. Data collection is crucial to understanding the key drivers of ineffective trials in order to address the underlying causes, as they can be caused by a wide range of factors, including action or inaction by one or more of the prosecution, the defence, or the court.

We asked Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts to make recommendations to tackle inefficiencies within the criminal courts. We are taking steps to deliver swifter justice with significant financial investment in the system – in record sitting days, new or refurbished court buildings and technology, and in legal professionals with significant investment in legal aid. In addition, the Deputy Prime Minister has already announced several initial measures we are taking forward to drive efficiency and reduce the number of ineffective trials. This includes the introduction of case coordinators in every Crown Court centre and supporting the Lady Chief Justice to publish the first ever National Listing Framework and pilot an AI Listing Assistant. We are also working with the Department for Transport and local authorities to expand the number of areas where prison transport vans can use bus lanes to reduce traffic delays - reducing wasted court time.