Controversial plans to shut down more than 70 courthouses in the next four years have been quietly shelved by the Ministry of Justice.
About 300 courts have been closed and sold-off since 2010, in a bid to dispose of under-used buildings and bankroll a £1 billion reform programme.
In September 2019, HM Courts and Tribunals Service was still harbouring ambitions to shut down a further 77 courthouses around England and Wales by 2025, but Covid prompted a rethink.
“HM Courts has confirmed it does not plan to dispose of any more court buildings as it needs to maximise courtroom capacity to support recovery,” the National Audit Office revealed in a report on the state of the justice system.
The MoJ said its estate of courthouses and tribunal centres remains under “continual review” but confirmed to the Standard: “There are no plans to consult on further closures.”
The shuttering of vast numbers of courts in the last decade has been dubbed “selling off the silver” by critics of the reforms, who question whether fair access to justice is being protected.
The Government allowed the backlog of criminal cases to grow in 2019 by cutting judicial sitting days, and that backlog has now rocketed to more than 60,000 due to the pandemic.
Blackfriars crown court, which closed in December 2019, was being used as a set for Netflix drama Top Boy last summer at a time when the justice system was desperate for extra space.
Conference centres in Monument, Barbican, and London Bridge, and a hotel in Croydon, have been co-opted as makeshift courts in the last 18 months to try to ease the crisis.
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When Blackfriars was earmarked for closure in early-2018, HMCTS said it “anticipates that there may be scope for further consolidation in the Crown Court estate in London in future” and identified Inner London crown court as likely to be sold-off. However those plans appear to have now been shelved.