Crown Court: Standards

The Crown Court operates from 84 buildings across England and Wales, with a core estate of over 500 courtrooms. The summary table below sets out the average number of courtrooms allocated for primary use by the Crown Court that were not sitting each month in the last year. The table in the attached spreadsheet then sets out the equivalent number of assigned courtrooms that were not sitting on each day in the last year. As set out in published stats here, the Crown Court sat a total of 110,647 days in 2025-26. By comparison, the Crown Court sat 107,921 days in 2024-25; 107,704 in 2023-24; 100,932 in 2022-23; 98,372 in 2021-22.

It is important to emphaise that it would be extremely unusual to have 100% courtroom utilisation in any jurisdiction, not least because the system needs to flex at short notice to meet unexpected capacity loss, cope with surges in demand, or accommodate overrunning trials, and to allow for additional public and press access. As such, it would be operationally unviable to risk sitting at that 100% utilisation.

In any event, there is also a fundamental difference between system capacity and physical capacity. Running courtrooms requires not just available physical space (and associated facilities, like jury retirement rooms, waiting areas, and custody cells) but depends on numbers of judges, court staff, and sufficient numbers of barristers and solicitors to enable cases to run.

That is why we are investing long term in the workforce and system capacity. We have invested a record £2.78 billion in our courts and tribunals service in 2026/27, including uncapped sitting days in the Crown Court for 2026/27 so that it can run at maximum system capacity. We have also announced additional investment in the workforce and legal professionals, including an additional £92 million per year for criminal legal aid solicitor fees, up to £34 million per year extra for criminal legal aid advocates, and match-funded criminal law pupillages and expanded the number of criminal barristers.

This financial investment is just one element of our work to tackle the crisis in our criminal courts as it is only by pulling all levers at our disposal – financial investment, modernisation, and pragmatic structural reform – that we can put the criminal courts onto a genuinely sustainable footing.

Source System - HMCTS Management Information (Courtroom Planner)

1 - Data extracted from Courtroom Planner on 18th June 2026, for courtrooms allocated to the Crown Court.

2 - Data is based on individual courtroom in the Crown Court estate. These are rooms whose primary use has been assigned to the Crown Court, not necessarily in a Crown Court venue and excludes rooms that were unavailable to sit for another reason.

3 - Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and is the best data that is available.

4 - Data are management information and are not subject to the same level of checks as official statistics.

5 - Data are taken from a live management information system and can change over time and for that reason might differ slightly from any previously published information.

6 - Data has not been cross referenced with case files.

7 - Crown courts do not normally sit on bank holidays or weekends so these have been removed.

8 – The data released in PQ3508 for April 2025 has been updated, with the revised version showing a slight reduction in instances classified as “not used.” The change is due to late reporting.