Criminal Proceedings: Bolton

Question

The Government is committed to supporting the recovery of the courts. We recognise that the impact of the pandemic in courts has been uneven across the country, with the North West being one of the areas experiencing a greater increase in caseload.

At the end of December 2021, the outstanding caseload in the Greater Manchester Local Criminal Justice Board was 3,016 and at Bolton Crown Court, it was 478. There were 58,818 outstanding cases nationally. There will always be outstanding cases as these figures include cases that are being prepared to be heard in the courts.

In order to tackle the backlog in cases, we have extended 30 Nightingale courtrooms beyond the end of March 2022. The closest Nightingale court is at Leeds Combined Court, which offers 3 additional criminal courtrooms. We have also opened two new ‘super courtrooms’ in Manchester and Loughborough, allowing up to an extra 250 cases a year to be heard across England and Wales.

We are also working with the judiciary to explore moving cases across regional boundaries to areas with spare capacity, where appropriate, and using a national, flexible pool of judges for some regions, including the North West, to draw from as required.

I also engage regularly with other key stakeholders in the North West, focusing on how we can deliver further progress in addressing the outstanding caseload and similar challenges. For example, I recently met with Andrew Pratt, the Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner for Lancashire, and chair of the Local Criminal Justice Board, and we discussed how the Government’s increased funding for Independent Sexual Violence Advisors and Independent Domestic Violence Advisors was enabling the local CJS to deliver better support for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence.

We have once again removed the limit on sitting days in the Crown Court for this financial year to allow courts to work at full capacity, delivering swifter justice for victims and reducing the backlog of cases. To secure enough capacity to sit at the required levels in 2022/23 and beyond we are expanding our plans for judicial recruitment.

These measures are already working, and as a result we expect to get through 20% more Crown Court cases this financial year than we did pre-Covid. Following an increase in funding as part of the Ministry of Justice’s Spending Review settlement, we aim to reduce the number of outstanding cases in the Crown Court to 53,000 by March 2025.