Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment she has made of the extent to which Crown Courts operate at their full capacity.

The ability of HMCTS to utilise available courtroom capacity is influenced by a number of factors including the number and type of judges available to hear Crown Court work, the number of sitting days allocated to the Crown Court and the activities of criminal justice system participants, including prosecuting authorities and defence practitioners.

All the above are kept under regular review at all levels of the Ministry and by the judiciary so that appropriate decisions and interventions can be made to make best use of capacity and resources, in light of both current workload and performance and future workload projections.