What is the Crown Court backlog?

The Ministry of Justice reports the number of outstanding cases in the Crown Court and magistrates' courts in its quarterly criminal court statistics, along with how long cases take from offence to completion.

"Backlog" is not an official term; the MoJ measure is the "open caseload" of outstanding cases, and some are waiting for normal reasons. Check whether a claim refers to all outstanding Crown Court cases or only trials.

Official sources: Criminal court statistics

The latest figure

The newest value is at Ministry of Justice and HM Prison and Probation Service. More on it: Prison population (England and Wales).

When is the next figure out?

Published weekly, usually on the Monday it describes. Machine route: the GOV.UK Content API (no key) for the publication returns JSON listing each weekly .ods attachment, newest first; the .ods 'Data' sheet holds the figures. The publication URL changes each calendar year (…-2026)

Every official release due in the next two weeks is on the release calendar.

Terms used in this answer

• Remand
  Holding a defendant in custody before trial or sentencing. People on remand are counted in the prison population even though they have not been sentenced.
• Headcount
  A count of individual people, each counted once regardless of how many hours they work or how many posts they hold.
• England and Wales
  A single legal jurisdiction, so crime, courts, prisons and death registration statistics are often published for England and Wales together.
• Administrative data
  Information collected by organisations while running a service, such as tax records, benefit claims or hospital activity, and then used to produce statistics.
• Year-on-year change
  The change between a figure for one period and the same period twelve months earlier, such as March this year compared with March last year.

Where the figures come from

• Find Case Law, legislation.gov.uk, the Sentencing Council and UK court records
  How to search UK court judgments on Find Case Law, check if a law is in force on legislation.gov.uk, and read sentencing, tribunal and CPS data.
• Defence, foreign aid and counter-terrorism statistics (MOD, FCDO, NATO, OECD, Home Office)
  Where to find official UK defence spending, armed forces numbers, NATO comparisons, foreign aid (ODA), arms export licences and terrorism statistics.
• Ministry of Justice statistics, police.uk and data.police.uk
  Find official prison population, Crown Court caseload, reoffending and legal aid figures, plus street-level crime from data.police.uk, and how to use them.

Related questions

• What is the UK prison population?
• Where can I find official crime statistics?
• How do I find the crime rate in my area?

This answer says where the official figures are published and how they are defined. It gives no verdict on any claim. To report an error, send a correction request. More questions about crime, police, prisons and courts: all Crime, police, prisons and courts questions.