Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 30
30
Accepted
Crown Court caseload data previously unreliable due to Common Platform errors
Conclusion
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
Government Response Summary
The government confirms the external review found confidence in Crown Court caseload statistics and details improvements made to magistrates’ caseload data measurement, including revisions due to identified issues in legacy systems. It also notes ongoing investigation for further remedial action for a small number of legacy cases.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
7.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented: March 2025 7.2 The external assurance review of the process and methods used to produce Crown Court caseload statistics concluded that MoJ can have a significant level of confidence in the Crown Court caseload statistics. 7.3 MoJ also made an improvement to the measurement of the magistrates’ caseload data in the December statistics publication. That followed work that HMCTS undertook to modernise its data and management information (MI). This was driven by the work to merge data from the legacy case management system, Libra, with the new data from Common Platform. During that work, HMCTS found evidence that the magistrates’ courts open caseload data had previously been overstated due to a variety of issues identified in the data derived from the legacy case management system, Libra. This revision represented an improvement in methodology, and an improvement in accuracy of the magistrates’ caseload data. 7.4 There are a small number of additional cohorts of legacy cases that are continuing to be investigated for remedial action and so the magistrates’ open caseload will be further revised in future. The first phase of the additional changes was released in the criminal courts statistics quarterly on 27 March 2025. They resulted in a downwards revision of around 17,000 open cases (less than 0.1% of those cases which have passed through the magistrates’ court on the legacy Libra system since 2010). 7.5 Other elements of caseloads in the CJS (e.g. Police recorded crime or issues of charging decisions) are for other government departments.