Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 24
12th Report - Crown Court backlogs
Published 5 Mar 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Crown Court backlogs All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
MoJ told us that it has spent “a significant amount of money” on maintaining the court estate over the last two years.64 HMCTS told us that there is a significant maintenance backlog, but nevertheless assured us that the total capacity of Crown Court courtrooms is adequate for the current number of sitting days and is not a constraint on progressing cases through the Crown Court. It told us that only 2% of capacity is lost each year because of planned or unplanned maintenance, and, by moving cases around between courts, only 0.2% of sitting days are lost.65 HMCTS stated that at present there are 16 Nightingale courtrooms–temporary courtrooms set up during Covid–19 to meet social–distancing requirements and which are typically three times as expensive to run as existing courts– still operating across seven venues. However, it told us that the remaining Nightingale courts now compensate for court closures for other reasons, for example courts that have shut because they contain RAAC concrete.66 HMCTS told us of its continual efforts to shut expensive Nightingale courts 58 Qq 6 ,42, 46 59 Qq 12, 16; C&AG‘s Report, Figure 10 60 Q 18 61 Qq 17–21, 28 62 Qq 22–23 63 Q 22 64 Q 26 65 Qq 26–27, 73 66 Qq 65–68; Letter from HMCTS to PAC, 22 January 2025 18 and use the main estate instead, but we remain concerned that Nightingale courts are still operating when up to 20% of courtrooms are not in use on a typical day.67
From: Public Accounts Committee, 12th Report - Crown Court backlogs (HC 348), 5 March 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twelfth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026.
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twelfth report from Session 2024-25
Published 16 May 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it "agrees with the Committee's recommendation" on each recommendation in the report, while setting out that current actions "alone are not enough to reduce the outstanding caseload" and that "substantial reform" is required.
- On a plan while the Leveson Review is awaited, it lists current measures and says it "looks forward to receiving" the Independent Review's recommendations in Spring 2025. It states that work is "already underway" on swift implementation, with a target of July 2025.
- On remand, it says listing is for the independent judiciary and that the Lord Chancellor "will continue to discuss" prioritising remand cases with the Lord Chief Justice. It "will consider further steps" once the Independent Review reports.
- On remand data, it "anticipate[s]" improved insights on time spent on remand by the end of March 2026, and will "aim to include them" in the relevant publication by April 2027.
- On AI and digitisation, further use is described as "dependent on Spending Review (SR) funding" and subject to further pilots. Decommissioning of the legacy systems Xhibit and Libra is "currently planned" for completion by Spring 2027.