Clearing the Coronavirus Backlog

The criminal courts have been operating at severely reduced capacity since the Prime Minister first announced the imposition of coronavirus restrictions towards the end of March.

It must be said that the problem is far more acute in the Crown Court than the Magistrates' Court, with jury trials - which are already many months (if not years) in the making - grinding to a halt for several weeks.

In the case of my own bench, which I'm sure is replicated across the whole of England and Wales, the District Judges took on the daily remand courts until the start of June, with Justices slowly returning to sit in pairs after that date. Those cases that could be adjourned were placed into notional holding courts, to be dealt with sometime in the future whenever capacity became available. I have previously described the practical measures taken in court to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

The normal Magistrates' sitting rota was cancelled and a list was drawn up of those Justices prepared to sit during the height of the coronavirus outbreak. Of course many colleagues have declined to sit due to their own personal circumstances, which is entirely understandable. We shall hopefully see them return - fit and healthy, with a spring in their step - very shortly.

Skip forward to the end of August and we are now running at near normal capacity. Those of us on the list, which is probably around half the bench, have naturally been called upon to sit on a far more regular basis. Some have been working remotely with a legal advisor to undertake SJP cases at home. All have been asked to undertake remote training modules at home. In the last month I have sat for seven full days, including on Saturdays which I have never previously done.

Through a combination of longer sitting days and robust case management we have pretty much managed to clear the backlog of everything but trials and non-CPS prosecution work. It has to be said that the pace of business is also quicker. Sitting in a pair, particularly with a colleague you know well, really does speed things up in terms of decision making.

We are currently running trials, but far fewer than would normally be the case. In my area there are more than 1,000 trials waiting to be heard, each of which is quite a time-consuming and labour intensive affair. Of course if precedent is anything to go by, only around a third of those trials will be effective - the trouble is that we often don't know which third until the last minute! In an effort to maintain social distancing, only those trials without witnesses are going ahead for the time being. Fewer breach courts are running than normal, with those that are only handling the cases of high risk offenders.

From the middle of September we will be running additional Saturday courts to clear the backlog of non-CPS prosecution work. These will mainly be police-led prosecutions for speeding, failing to identify the driver of a vehicle, traffic light violations and the like. These cases are usually quite straightforward to resolve, dealing in matters of fact and absent of complicated matters of law. They can usually be dealt with fairly swiftly.

I think the Lord Chancellor had grand plans for Saturday courts, but members of the legal profession expressed concerns about the practicalities and inconveniences of weekend working. The defendants in most police-led prosecution cases are unrepresented, which is why those pose fewer difficulties when listed on a Saturday.