Almost 200 face long waits for justice in Nottinghamshire

A legal charity has condemned the delays in criminal justice as “unacceptable”.

Criminal courts have faced mounting pressures in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which saw trials put on hold during lockdowns.

Ministry of Justice figures show 189 criminal cases had been unresolved for two years or more in Nottinghamshire as of March 2023.

For comparison, 140 cases had been outstanding for two years or longer at the same point in 2022, while 17 had done so as of March 2019.

The most common type of offence involving a long wait was for drug offences, which was responsible for 51 cases.

Lubna Shuja, The Law Society president. said: “The figures show more people – the accused, victims, defendants and their families – are waiting to see justice and are left to cope with unresolved cases hanging over them for years.

“We’ve been saying these delays are unacceptable, but it is only getting worse. The government needs to act now and invest in a properly functioning system if we are to tackle the court delays.”

Across England and Wales there were more than 62,000 incomplete cases, including 1,608 in Nottinghamshire.

Ms Shuja said it was unlikely the Government would hit its “meagre” target of reducing this backlog to 53,000 by March 2025 and called for investment across the justice system to cut down the number of long waits.

In Nottinghamshire, the median waiting time across unresolved cases was 213 days.

Nationally, 6,073 cases were facing two-year delays – a significant rise from 3,949 the year before, and nearly 10 times the 626 as of March 2019.

In June, the House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee warned key court reforms – aimed at speeding up the time cases can be processed – had been delayed significantly.

It warned these setbacks were undermining public confidence in the justice system.

An MoJ spokesman said: “We are doing all we can to reduce the outstanding caseload in the Crown Court, including lifting the cap on the number of days courts can sit and recruiting more judges to help restore the swift access to justice victims deserve.”