Today’s (Thursday 1 October) Law pages in The Times featured a look at the latest case backlog figures from the Ministry of Justice (Criminal court statistics quarterly: April to June 2026, published on 24 September 2026). The data showed new highs for case backlogs in both the crown courts (80,829 cases) and magistrates courts (380,230).
The piece went on to compare the backlog in the magistrates courts unfavourably with the situation in the crown courts. This is unfair on magistrates – you can’t fairly compare the crown courts to the magistrates courts in this way, because they do very different jobs and hear very different cases.
And they hear vastly different numbers of cases too. In 2025, the crown courts heard 120,693 cases. Complex, lengthy, often multi-day cases, involving a jury. In the same year, the magistrates courts heard a mammoth 1,499,007 cases – nearly 12-and-a-half times more. Many of these were low-level and non-imprisonable offences, such as motoring offences and TV license evasion, while others are a bit more serious, eg: common assault (without significant injury), low-level criminal damage and some public order/drunk and disorderly offences.
Happily, it does look like the backlog in the crown courts is stabilising. As The Times piece acknowledges, the government paid to raise the cap on judicial sitting days in April – this increased the number of sitting days in the crown courts, which is starting to have a small but positive impact on the crown court backlog. This is a good thing. As we explained above, the crown courts hear far more serious, complex, and longer, cases than the magistrates courts, so a lengthy crown court delay (if you are the victim of a serious crime, you could still be waiting for up to three years to have your day in court) is incredibly stressful and traumatic. It is right that the government have prioritised the crown courts, because the impact of a big backlog of cases there is more serious.
But the magistrates courts need support to get their backlog down too. Although the headline number of outstanding cases is much larger, cases are heard faster in the magistrates courts and the trauma of delays for victims witnesses and families is much less acute.
These points are reflected in our statement, that we sent to The Times when they contacted us about their piece. The Times chose not to use all our statement, but you can read it below and there’s a link to The Times’s published article below that:
Our statement
Catherine Feast, Magistrates’ Association Chief Executive, said:
“The latest court backlog figures show a disappointing, but not surprising, increase. This is mirrored in the crown court, showing that it’s a consistent issue across the criminal justice system.
Magistrates already handle around 95 per cent of criminal cases and without them, the system would quickly grind to a halt. By committing to extending magistrates’ sentencing powers to 18 or 24 months, the government can ensure that Crown Courts are able to focus on the most serious cases – such as murder and rape – while cases appropriate to be heard by magistrates can be allocated accordingly and more quickly, resulting in an improved experience for victims and defendants.
To do this, there must be extra investment to ensure magistrates’ courts have the capacity and resources to deal with the work being asked of them. This includes proper resourcing of the probation service, recruiting and retaining the legal advisors who are essential for magistrates to do their work, repairing and maintaining our crumbling courts, and recruiting more magistrates to hear cases – the renewed recruitment campaign is therefore welcome, but it must be accompanied by effective retention and training resources, as well as sitting capacity.
The magistracy has shown a strong ability to adapt, time and again. During the Covid-19 pandemic, magistrates continued to perform their duties by working in court buildings that remained open or taking part in sittings online from home. Additionally, when the retirement age for magistrates was increased from 70 to 75, approximately 1,500 retired magistrates returned to service to address the shortage in magistrate numbers.
Read the published piece on The Times website (visible to Times subscribers only): https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/record-high-magistrates-court-backlog-rivals-crown-court-crisis-sfzg0js3k
