Delays continued to plague the county courts in the last months of Covid restrictions – and there is a fresh warning that timeliness will not improve anytime soon.

Quarterly civil justice statistics published by the Ministry of Justice yesterday show that from October to December 2021 the mean time taken for small claims to go to trial was 51.4 weeks. That was 14.3 weeks longer than the same period pre-pandemic in 2019 and roughly the same time as a year before, during lockdown.

Multi/fast track claims took 74 weeks to go to trial, which is 13 weeks longer than in October to December 2019.

The MoJ predicted that claim volumes are likely to return to historic trend levels over time, but court users should brace themselves for delays for some time.

The department said: ‘As timeliness measures are taken from the initial claim date, data for the next few quarters is likely to continue to include some cases issued before or during the early stages of the pandemic.

County court

Small claims are now taking almost a whole year to come to trial

‘Measures implemented following the pandemic, such as the opening of Covid-secure courtrooms and the increase in hearings by remote means, will have benefited later cases and as such contributed to timeliness measures remaining stable during 2021 and not increasing further.’

Covid-19 and the lockdown led to an uptick in delays for all claims to reach trial, but the report notes that even before 2020, a sustained period of increasing period of increasing receipts had increased the time taken to hear civil cases. While additional venues have been provided to add temporary capacity to hear cases, some of these will be shut following the government’s announcement.

Critics will also point out that while the pandemic contributed to record delays in civil justice, the government has closed around 70 county courts in England and Wales since 2010.

The quarterly statistics also highlight the sharp drop in personal injury claims that appears to have happened since the introduction of the RTA portal last year.

Between October and December 2021, personal injury claims were down 30% to 19,000 compared to the same quarter in 2019. Personal injury claims accounted for 61% of all damages claims in the most recent quarter, down 28 percentage points on October to December 2019, when they accounted for 89% of all claims.