Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many outstanding trials are currently awaiting a court date to be assigned in (a) Magistrates and (b) Crown courts in (i) the UK and (ii) each region of the UK.

The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice only has responsibility for England and Wales. Trials have been interpreted to mean cases which have received a not guilty plea to one or more offence/s, and we have interpreted the question as seeking to ask whether there is a trial court date set for such a case.

Crown Court

Notes

Data has been taken from the Crown Court system Xhibit. Xhibit is a live system and as such data is liable to change.

The data is based on a defendant entering a not guilty plea to one or more counts and no verdict code has been recorded against the count or a guilty plea having been entered against any other count.

The next trial date is the earliest date recorded in a warned, firm or fixed list.

The data represents the outstanding trial cases position as at w/e 20-DEC-2020.

If a trial involves more than one case number, these have been counted separately.

Magistrates’ Court

The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.