Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many cases were rescheduled in (a) Greater Manchester and (b) Greater London due to insufficient court space in the months of (i) February, (ii) March and (iii) April 2019.

Published data for criminal cases show the number of trials which were vacated or ineffective (and therefore do not go ahead) in the criminal courts and for ineffective trials, the reasons why the trial was ineffective. One of these is ‘court administrative issues including a lack of court time and court accommodation failures’, – however it is not possible to identify instances where this is specifically due to reasons of ‘insufficient court space’.

Available data on vacated and ineffective trials is published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-october-to-december-2018

These statistics are currently published up to December 2018. Data for January – March 2019 are due to be published on 27 June 2019.

Information relating to rescheduled cases and the reasons for them in the civil and family courts are not held by the Ministry of Justice.