Problems with buildings and technology have also reduced court efficiency. The Law Society has raised concerns over problems with the suitability of courts’ facilities ¹ The Law Society, ‘Five steps to resolve the backlogs in our courts’, 19 December 2022, retrieved 24 October 2023, www.lawsociety.org.uk/campaigns/court-reform/news/five-point-plan-to-fix-court-backlog  while the Bar Council has described instances in which leaks, infestations and collapsing walls have blighted court space. ² The Bar Council, ‘Access denied: The state of the justice system in England and Wales in 2022’, November 2022, retrieved 24 October 2023, www.barcouncil.org.uk/resource/access-denied-november-2022.html#:~:text=A%20fair%20and%20just%20society,in%20our%20justice%20system%20today  However, these issues have had less impact than the insufficiency of the workforce to make use of existing space. ³ The Bar Council, ‘Access denied: The state of the justice system in England and Wales in 2022’, November 2022, retrieved 24 October 2023, www.barcouncil.org.uk/resource/access-denied-november-2022.html#:~:text=A%20fair%20and%20just%20society,in%20our%20justice%20system%20today 

Similarly concerning is courts’ inability to make use of available sitting days. The government (which funds sitting days) began to reduce the number of sitting days from 2015, and Covid restrictions reduced these further in 2020 to the lowest recorded level (69,100 compared to 113,800 in 2015). ⁴ Ministry of Justice, ‘Civil justice statistics quarterly: January to March 2023’ (Royal Courts of Justice Annual Tables – 2022 (‘Table 9.2’)), retrieved 24 October 2023, www.gov.uk/government/statistics/civil-justice-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2023 
  Sitting days have since grown to 102,600 in 2022. However, the amount of time spent hearing cases has been much lower since the onset off the pandemic; 2.7, 2.9 and 2.8 hours per sitting day in 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively, compared to 3.6, 3.5 and 3.5 hours in 2017, 2018 and 2019 respectively. 

This means courts are making less use of the available time. Covid restrictions may have played a part in this, as courts listed cases less aggressively than in the past (meaning that when cases were cracked, there was often no other case to take its place). ⁵ Ministry of Justice, ‘Civil justice statistics quarterly: January to March 2023’ (Royal Courts of Justice Annual Tables – 2022 (‘Table 9.2’)), retrieved 24 October 2023, www.gov.uk/government/statistics/civil-justice-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2023 
  Similarly, greater use of remote hearings – scheduled for specific times – may be extending the time between hearings, leading to less efficient use of sitting days. 

The increased complexity of cases may also have exacerbated listing problems. These cases have less predictable lengths, and it is harder to schedule cases to make best use of sitting days when a greater proportion of cases are unpredictable in this way. Concerningly, given our expectation that the number of complex cases will continue increasing, this means that productivity may continue to decrease. 

This declining efficiency, coupled with rising demand, has led to the crown courts receiving more cases than they have been able to process for the last four years and the size of the case backlog growing dramatically. 

In the magistrates’ courts, the backlog reached 422,156 cases in Q2 2020, some 40.8% higher than in December 2019 and the highest since the data was first published in 2012. Magistrates’ courts processing capacity has grown more quickly than the growth in demand since 2020 and as a result, the backlog has been cut by 18.2% and is now 15.2% higher than in December 2019. Several factors have contributed to this. First, many cases are less complex, allowing greater use of remote hearings. Second, many cases can be heard with a single magistrate and legal adviser (the single justice procedure).