By Ben Kerrigan-
New figures fom the UK Ministry Of Justice(MOJ), reveals record high rise in Crown Court backlog, as the number of outstanding cases reaching another record high,
Figures published by the Ministry of Justice for April to June 2026 show that the Crown Court’s open caseload reached a series peak of 80,829 cases at the end of June, an increase of 392 on the previous quarter.
The number of cases waiting at least a year has also reached a record 23,706, up 22% on a year earlier, while 7,255 cases had been open for two years or more, an increase of 15% over the same period.
The median time for an open Crown Court case to be completed has now reached 203 days, another series high. Those figures represent something more consequential for victims, witnesses, and defendant,s than an abstract administrative backlog:.
They mean an increasing number of criminal cases remaining unresolved for months or years while the courts attempt to process new work arriving at a system already operating under considerable pressure.
The Ministry’s statisticians say receipts into the criminal courts remained above disposals during the latest quarter, the basic arithmetic that explains why the open caseload continues to rise. At the Crown Court, receipts of sexual-offence and rape cases have continued to increase, with rape receipts reaching a series peak.
In a parliamentary debate earlier this year, Sackman argued that triable-either-way cases were being completed more than four times faster in magistrates’ courts than in the Crown Court and said that removing the defendant’s current right to elect a jury trial in certain cases would free Crown Court capacity for the most serious offences.
The Government’s own reform material remains explicit that jury trials would not disappear. Its proposal would retain jury trials for the most serious cases while introducing judge-alone trials for certain intermediate cases and complex fraud cases.
The Crown Court’s open caseload has not merely remained high; it has reached another series peak at a time when the Government has already lifted the financial cap on Crown Court sitting days. That change took effect in April, meaning that the latest statistics capture only the first three months of the new uncapped arrangements.
That point was emphasised by Criminal Bar Association chair Andrew Thomas, who argued that the national figure needed to be examined more closely rather than treated as evidence of deterioration everywhere.
According to the CBA, the backlog has fallen in four of the seven regions, with almost all of the latest 392-case increase concentrated in London. Thomas pointed to the planned opening of a new central London court with eight additional courtrooms and the reopening of Harrow Crown Court as developments that could improve London’s capacity.
His intervention introduces an important qualification to the headline figure. A national record does not mean that every region is experiencing the same trajectory, and the latest increase is heavily geographically concentrated.
The CBA’s argument is therefore that the impact of additional Crown Court capacity should be allowed more time to emerge before conclusions are drawn from figures covering only the first quarter after the sitting-days cap was lifted.
But even that more optimistic interpretation leaves the underlying pressure unmistakable. The national open caseload is at a series high, the number of cases waiting more than a year has reached a record, and cases remaining open for two years or more have also reached a record.
The median time for an open Crown Court case is now 203 days, and the Ministry says the age of the outstanding caseload continues to incre
The figures also expose why the debate cannot be reduced to a dispute about courtroom numbers. The system needs judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers, court staff, interpreters, available courtrooms and sitting days, as well as enough legal-aid capacity to ensure that cases can actually proceed when a courtroom becomes available.
Law Society president Mark Evans said the Government should use the latest figures as an opportunity to develop what he described as a long-term, whole-system plan for criminal justice reform, including usable courts, sufficient judges and staff and the maximum possible number of sitting days.
He also called for further investment in criminal legal aid, including reform of the means test and fees paid to provider
That intervention points towards the central difficulty confronting ministers. A courtroom that cannot sit because there is no judge, a case that cannot proceed because defence representation is unavailable, or a trial delayed because the necessary court infrastructure does not exist all contribute to the same backlog, even though they require different remedies.
The Government’s latest response therefore offers a mixture of immediate capacity measures and longer-term structural change. The Ministry says specialist rape courts, additional sitting days, investment in the court estate, technology and extra funding for criminal legal aid are among the measures being deployed.
At the same time, its criminal-court reform programme continues to describe changes to the distribution of criminal cases between magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court, alongside judge-alone trials for specified categories, as part of the route towards reducing pressure on the Crown Court.
What is less clear is how these different strands will be sequenced,. The Ministry’s data show that the number of Crown Court cases open for at least a year has risen by 22% over the past year, and the number open for at least two years has risen by 15%. and whether ministers regard the structural changes as an indispensable part of the answer or one option among several.
The UK Government’s own figures indicate that the problem is not simply a temporary queue waiting to be cleared. The number of cases entering the system, particularly serious sexual offences, remains high, while the accumulated caseload is ageing.
The Ministry’s data show that the number of Crown Court cases open for at least a year has risen by 22% over the past year, and the number open for at least two years has risen by 15%.
There is consequently a tension at the heart of today’s announcement. The Government is promising to reduce the backlog at precisely the moment the official statistics show that the backlog has reached its highest recorded level.
Ministers can point to a significant increase in capacity and argue that the latest figures capture only the beginning of the period in which unlimited Crown Court sitting days have been available. Critics can point to the fact that the caseload nevertheless continued to rise and that the oldest cases are becoming more numerous.
Neither interpretation changes the underlying arithmetic, because more cases are entering the system than are currently being completed, and until that relationship changes, the outstanding caseload cannot begin to fall sustainably .
There is a question of how much of the solution ministers expect to come from moving cases out of the Crown Court, and altering the circumstances in which trials are heard by juries, and how much is expected to come from investment in the existing system.
With a criminal justice system already carrying more than 80,000 outstanding Crown Court cases, the gap between the lack of investment and the number of cases coming in is no longer theoretical. It goes to the question of what kind of court system England and Wales will have when the Government’s promised reduction in the backlog is finally supposed to materialise.
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