Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what was the (a) mean and (b) median number of days taken from offence to completion of rape cases for (i) Crown and (ii) Magistrates Court in England and Wales, by (A) individual court and (B) region for each of the last three years for which figures are available.

Timeliness estimates for defendants dealt with at the magistrates’ courts and Crown Courts for selected offences and geographic breakdowns can be found in the attached table.

Estimates of timeliness from offence to completion are taken from the point of offence occurring to the eventual completion of a case at court. Reporting and recording of non-recent offences can have an adverse impact, especially for mean estimates and for sexual offences which can be reported months and years after the offence occurred. As such caution should be taken when drawing conclusions from granular breakdowns by offence and geographic location which may be based on very few and even single cases, and therefore show marked variations.

The pandemic is the primary cause of the increased caseload in our courts. Prior to the pandemic, the outstanding caseload had reduced significantly, from over 55,000 in late 2014 to c.33,000 in late 2018. The Government is committed to supporting the recovery of the courts. We have extended 30 Nightingale courtrooms beyond the end of March 2022 and removed the limit on the number of days the Crown Court can sit in the 2021/22 financial year. To secure enough capacity to sit at the required levels in 2022/23 and beyond we are expanding our plans for judicial recruitment.

To provide additional capacity in the Crown Courts we are extending magistrates’ court sentencing powers from 6 to 12 months’ imprisonment for a single Triable Either Way offence to allow more cases to be heard in the magistrates’ court and help to drive down the backlog of cases over the coming years.

These measures are already working, and as a result we expect to get through 20% more Crown Court cases in the next financial year than we did pre-Covid. Following an increase in funding as part of the Ministry of Justice’s Spending Review settlement, we aim to reduce the number of outstanding cases in the Crown Court to 53,000 by March 2025.