The cases, the chatter, the chaos: what’s really going on in the law
By Jonathan Ames and Catherine Baksi
Thursday, 13 February 2025, 12.01am GMT, The Times
Isleworth Crown Court will close five of its fourteen courtrooms from March because of the cap on the number of "sitting days" the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is prepared to fund, according to a note from the court’s resident judge in west London.
While the backlog of Crown Court cases has hit a record high of more than 73,000, Judge Martin Edmunds KC said the court was already operating at reduced capacity, using only twelve courtrooms. He also noted that Isleworth is listing trials as far out as 2027, and is dealing with the “knock-on effect of the failure of heating to our cells.”
As a result, Edmunds said he has vacated some long trials.
Meanwhile, the Recorder of Nottingham, Nirmal Shant KC, wrote to court users asking for patience with court staff, as Nottingham Crown Court also grapples with heating failures and leaks in the court building — leaving three courtrooms out of action.
Shant also reported that remote video links are not functioning in five courtrooms, with these issues ongoing for several months.
Ministry of Justice billions worse off after years of cuts
It is well known that the MoJ arguably suffered more than any other Whitehall department when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government imposed severe spending cuts following the 2008 financial crisis.
Now, new research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, confirms that the ministry continues to bear the brunt of this austerity legacy.
According to the researchers, the MoJ has fared worse than other ‘unprotected’ departments (those outside health, education, and defence). Their analysis shows that if the MoJ’s day-to-day budget had grown at the same rate as the average department since 2007-08, it would have been 41 per cent higher in 2024-25 — equivalent to an extra £4.5 billion.
Even if the MoJ’s budget had merely kept pace with the average unprotected department, the ministry would still have been 9 per cent better off, representing an additional £1 billion.