The government must provide ‘a political commitment to fund capacity across the justice system’, the Bar Council has urged as it published data revealing a ‘postcode lottery of access to local justice across England and Wales’.
The data shows that 239 courts, including Nightingale courts, closed in England and Wales between 2010 and this February – representing 43% of all courts and leaving more than half of all parliamentary constituencies with no active local court.
There is now no local court in 373 parliamentary constituencies and 155 local authority areas, compared with 200 constituencies and 178 local authorities which still have a local court.
The Bar Council has created an interactive access to justice dashboard which provides national and regional data on active and closed courts, legal aid providers and legal aid barristers in England and Wales.
The dashboard, for example, shows that lord chancellor Dominic Raab’s Surrey constituency of Esher and Walton has no active local courts, no legal aid providers or barristers and no legal advice centres.
Mark Fenhalls QC, chair of the Bar Council, said: ‘Local courts matter and local justice matters. There is an increasing demand for access to local public services including access to justice. The closure of hundreds of courts over the last decade means that people must travel further and for longer, and waiting lists and backlogs have grown.
‘We urgently need a political commitment to fund capacity across the justice system. Technology may be able to help on the fringes, but the government urgently needs to appoint more judges in all jurisdictions, commit to a long-term rebuilding of crumbling court estate, and widen access to legal aid.
‘If people cannot access justice quickly and efficiently, the public will lose confidence that the law will help them resolve family, property and financial disputes.’
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: ‘The decision to close a court is not taken lightly and all closed sites were either underused, dilapidated or too close to another.
‘Our £1.3bn investment to modernise courts means access to justice is no longer solely reliant on going to a court building, with thousands now using services or going to hearings online.’
They added that ‘the Crown Court backlog has fallen and we are giving criminal barristers a £7,000 pay rise as we restore the swift access to justice people deserve’, which justice minister James Cartlidge has said will be introduced by the end of September.
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