Lord Burnett breaks down causes of court case backlogs

Lord Burnett of Maldon, Lord Chief Justice and Head of the Judiciary of England and Wales, has outlined the pressures on the Court system following Covid.

Addressing the House of Lords Constitution Committee today, he explained that “it’s not really the headline figure of outstanding cases that we should be looking at,” but the “timeliness.”

“The problem that COVID has caused in particular, and it was developing pre-COVID, is that the proportion of cases that are outstanding for more than six months has, for example, gone up since June 2019 from 23 per cent to 57 per cent.”

He said “the legal profession is struggling to deploy the lawyer power to deal with the cases,” and suggested that post-2010 cuts were also to blame.