Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 30
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 ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
MoJ confirmed that it had identified three factors that caused it to pause publication of its Crown Court caseload data from June to December 2024. It had found that case records in Common Platform (the new digital case management system for the criminal justice system) had been adversely affected through human error, technical systems issues and data coding issues. It undertook two actions to rectify these issues: it checked how data was being input into Common Platform, and it commissioned an external review of the quality of Crown Court caseload data.84 MoJ and HMCTS assured us that following these actions, they now have a significant level of confidence in Crown Court data.85 HMCTS told us that it now undertakes more thorough user testing before releasing new features in Common Platform.86
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.