Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many Recorders have been sitting each year from 2015 to 2021; and for how many days each Recorder sat.

Table 1 shows how many Recorders sat and the total number of days sat by Recorders, in each year between 2015 and 2020. Figures are for England and Wales. Data can only be supplied to December 2020 because the 2021 data are not yet finalised.

Table 1. The number of Recorders who sat, and the total number of Recorder sitting days, England and Wales, 2015 to 2020.

Source: Judicial Itineraries System

We are making use of fee-paid judiciary, including those sitting in retirement. For a second year in a row, we have increased the maximum number of sitting days for all Recorders from 30 to 80 days. This year, our planned recruitment has brought in additional judges since October 2021, which is helping us to further increase our activity for the rest of the financial year.

Notes for the table:

1) These figures represent only the days sat in all courts and chambers (including the Royal Courts of Justice). Recorders undertake a range of other functions outside the courtroom that are not shown here.

2) The data for each Recorder sitting has been extracted from a live system and so is slightly different to the published data on sitting days. This can be found in the Royal Court of Justice sitting days tables: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/civil-justice-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2021

3) Please note the Judicial Itinerary tool, from which each Recorder's sitting day was extracted, was deployed in April 2015 so this data is missing for Jan-Mar 2015. Therefore our 2015 figure only covers Apr to Dec of that year.

4) Only Recorders sitting in the capacity of Recorder are included. Recorders sittings as a Deputy High Court Judge are excluded.