Backlog in England and Wales courts climbs past 80,000 as reforms loom

More than 79,600 criminal cases are backlogged in the courts of England and Wales, according to Ministry of Justice data, with the Crown Court backlog at a record high since early 2023. The backlog is projected to reach about 100,000 by 2028, even as ministers explore radical reforms to speed proceedings, including removing juries from a number of trials.

Victims and defendants face lengthy delays; some serious crimes charged today could wait years for trial. About a quarter of violence and drug offences have been in the backlog for at least a year, and more than 30% of sexual offences have been in the system that long. By contrast, in 2019 there were around 200 sexual offences open for longer than a year; now there are more than 4,000.

The scale reflects a combination of funding and capacity gaps. The coalition government began austerity measures in 2010, slashing the Ministry of Justice budget. Today the MoJ’s total budget sits near £13 billion, roughly £4.5 billion lower in real terms than it would have been if it had kept pace with the average government department. The cuts coincided with the closure of courtrooms; by 2022, eight Crown Court centres and more than 160 magistrates courts had been closed. Ministers also introduced a cap on the number of days judges are paid to sit in court, which reduced courtroom activity. In 2016-17 there were 107,863 sitting days, but that had fallen to 81,899 by the eve of the pandemic.

When there is no judge, there is no hearing, which left individual courtrooms idle even if a court complex still housed other proceedings. The Covid-19 pandemic then shut Crown Courts for two months at the start, and even after reopening many courtrooms could not be used for trials because social distancing requirements required smaller spaces. The result was a backlog that widened as the earlier closures began to bite.

A vivid example is Blackfriars Crown Court in London. Before the pandemic it handled many serious cases, but ministers closed it in 2019 and relocated work to Snaresbrook. By September 2019 it had about 1,500 cases; by September this year it was handling more than 4,200.

During the pandemic, temporary Nightingale courts were opened to keep cases moving, sitting for about 10,000 days between July 2020 and 2024. They proved useful for routine matters, but many could not handle serious crime involving custody because they lacked cells or proper security. There are still five Nightingale courts operating, all slated to close by March 2026. Some closures have been reversed, such as the reopening of Chichester’s Crown Court to relieve overflow from Guildford, but the long-term future of several sites remains uncertain.

A second, persistent pressure has been funding for legal aid. The National Audit Office has found a real-terms cut in legal aid spending of roughly £728 million between 2012-13 and 2022-23, and the Criminal Bar Association has noted a 12% decline in the number of barristers doing criminal work between 2018-19 and 2024-25. In 2021, the government was advised to inject £135 million more into legal aid, but many in the profession say the help did not go far enough and that months of strikes by defence barristers followed in the next year, further slowing progress through the courts.

Policing rises announced in 2019, including a pledge to hire 20,000 additional officers, increased the number of suspects entering the system without a plan commensurate with court capacity. Prosecutions often require lengthy digital evidence gathering—texts, chats, and other material from mobile devices—that can take months to process before a trial, extending timelines further.

The backlog also feeds into the prisons. There are about 17,700 people on remand in England and Wales, nearly double the level seen in 2019, and close to 12,000 people awaiting trial. Remand accounted for roughly 20% of the prison population. The MoJ projects the overall prison population to top 100,000 by 2030, a squeeze that has prompted early-release schemes for some offenders and heightened concern about crowding if remand cases do not move to trial or sentencing promptly.

With remand cases taking longer to resolve, the system risks delaying release or sentencing for many inmates, even as other parts of the criminal-justice system push to speed up proceedings. The government’s reforms, including expanding the use of non-jury trials in certain cases, are aimed at cutting the backlog, but advocates warn that any changes must preserve fairness for victims and defendants alike. The coming years will show whether these measures can reverse decades of austerity-driven strain without compromising essential safeguards.