Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has made an assessment of the adequacy of court capacity in Wiltshire to meet expected caseloads in the next five years.

This Government inherited record and rising courts backlog. In the criminal courts jurisdiction, we have funded a record-high allocation of 110,000 Crown Court sitting days across England and Wales this financial year to deliver swifter justice for victims, 4,000 more than in 24/25 under the previous Government. However, current national system performance and projected demand in coming years suggest the scale of the challenge is beyond what increasing sitting days can achieve. This is why the Government asked Sir Brian Leveson to chair an Independent Review of Criminal Courts, to propose once-in-a-generation reform that will improve timeliness in the courts and deliver swifter justice for victims. The first part of the Review now been published. We will carefully consider Sir Brian’s proposals before setting out the Government’s full response in the autumn.

In Wiltshire, current Crown Court performance compares favourably with other centres. Between June 2024 and June 2025, new case receipts declined by 3%; and the outstanding caseload reduced by 18%, indicating that we do have the capacity to meet current demand in the Crown court.

In the magistrates’ courts, our open caseloads rose steadily last year, demonstrating that the challenge we face is across the criminal courts structure, not solely in the Crown Court. We continue to recruit high levels of magistrates and legal advisers to secure resilience in the magistrates’ court for years to come.