Court sitting days are to increase as justice ministers struggle to deal with the growing backlog of criminal cases.
A notice on the judiciary’s intranet announced that following “extensive discussions” between the lord chief justice and the lord chancellor, the number of sitting days available in the crown court before the end of the financial year has been increased by 700. It said that the senior presiding judge, Lady Justice Macur, has distributed them among the circuits.
Lawyers said this amounted to an acknowledgment by the Ministry of Justice that the cost-saving measure of reducing the number of sitting days had gone too far, and reiterated their call for increased resources to prevent the collapse of the criminal justice system.
In September Lady Justice Macur