Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many courtrooms in crown courts were not sitting on each day in the past month.

The Crown Court operates from 84 buildings across England and Wales, with a core estate of over 500 courtrooms. The table below outlines the number of courtrooms in the Crown Court that were not sitting each day in April 2026. To contextualise these figures, in April 2026 the Crown Court sat a total of 9,019 days. This compares to 8,751 in April 2025, 9,571 in April 2024, 7,337 in April 2023, 7,041 in April 2022 and 7,487 in April 2021.

It would be extremely unusual to have 100% courtroom utilisation in any jurisdiction, not least because the system needs to flex at short notice to meet unexpected capacity loss, cope with surges in demand, or accommodate overrunning trials and to allow for additional public and press access.

There is also a difference between system capacity and physical capacity. Running courtrooms requires not just available rooms but also, for example (but not limited to), judicial time, court staff, and sufficient numbers of barristers and solicitors.

We have invested a record £2.78 billion in our courts and tribunals service in 2026/27, including uncapped sitting days in the Crown Court for 2026/27 so that it can run at maximum system capacity. We have also announced additional investment in the workforce and legal professionals, including an additional £92 million per year for criminal legal aid solicitor fees, up to £34 million per year extra for criminal legal aid advocates, and match-funded criminal law pupillages to open a career at the Criminal Bar to more young people from across society.

This financial investment is just one element of our work to tackle the crisis in our criminal courts as it is only by pulling all levers at our disposal – financial investment, modernisation and pragmatic structural reform – that we can put the criminal courts onto a genuinely sustainable footing.

Source System - HMCTS Management Information (Courtroom Planner)

1 - Data extracted from Courtroom Planner on 4 June 2026, for courtrooms allocated to the Crown Court.

2 - Data is based on individual courtrooms in the Crown Court estate. These are rooms whose primary use has been assigned to the Crown Court, not necessarily in a Crown Court venue and excludes rooms that were unavailable to sit for another reason.

3 - Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and is the best data that is available.

4 - Data are management information and are not subject to the same level of checks as official statistics.

5 - Data are taken from a live management information system and can change over time and for that reason might differ slightly from any previously published information.

6 - Data has not been cross referenced with case files.

7 - Crown courts do not normally sit on bank holidays or weekends so these have been removed.

8 – Crown court sittings can be intentionally reduced over Christmas and Easter holiday periods, as reflected in the table.