Britain’s Crumbling Courts Fight Fleas, Sewage and Budget Cuts

Katharine Gemmell and Irina Anghel
·4 min read

(Bloomberg) -- A courthouse in southeastern England had sewage seeping out of pipes for months, a justice building in Wales was beset with fleas and a criminal barrister in London regularly sprayed perfume to mask the smell from damp, moldy walls.

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In the midst of a long-slow decline from a lack of investment, the UK’s justice system is reaching a breaking point. Court backlogs are near record levels, and low pay and legal-aid rates led to a historic walkout of criminal trial lawyers this summer. It could all get worse as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government shifts into austerity mode.

Basic building services are already failing. Wood Green Crown Court, one of London’s biggest, put trials on hold on Dec. 13 because of broken central heating. A hearing northwest of the capital couldn’t go ahead last week because the room temperature was too low and no other courtrooms were available.

Over the last decade, court buildings have been slowly crumbling and staff are forced to scramble to fix plumbing, repair electricity and even replace light bulbs, according to Mark Fenhalls, chairman of the Bar Council.

“It’s all so painful,” he said in an interview. “They fight for every penny.”

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While Britain’s budget crunch has widespread implications across services from education to health care, the reverberations in the justice system threaten one of the most basic functions of a democratic government: implementing the rule of law.

The Ministry of Justice has lost around a quarter of its budget in nominal terms between 2010 and 2020. The UK government announced its biggest round of fiscal tightening since the original era of austerity began after the global financial crisis. While the Ministry of Justice’s spending allotment is set to increase by 4% to £9.8 billion ($12 billion) next year, the increase fails to keep pace with the rate of inflation, which is projected at 7.4%, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.

The grand Royal Courts of Justice and the Old Bailey in central London remain a hallmark of the UK’s court system, but their pristine conditions are marked contrast to the dozens of facilities that carry out the bulk of day-to-day operations.

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A reform program started more than a decade ago helped create the current situation by funneling more work through fewer facilities — more than 40% of court buildings have been closed since 2010, according to data from the Bar Council.

A mix of cuts to legal-aid fees and the Covid-19 pandemic has meant the criminal court backlog has risen to more than 62,000 cases in October, according to data from HM Courts & Tribunal Service. The UK dropped three spots to 19 in the World Justice Project’s latest ranking of criminal court systems.

“Repairing and rebuilding our public criminal court rooms is a tangible sign of the seriousness of investing again,” said Kirsty Brimelow, chairwoman of the Criminal Bar Association. “We will continue to fail to retain the barristers needed to prosecute and defend in criminal cases if courts remain a depressed workplace.”

The problems also affect other parts of the legal system. Family law courts had a backlog of more than 110,000 suits, which take almost a year to complete on average, according to HMCTS data analyzed by the Law Society.

The government is betting that efficiency measures, including digitalizing some court services and raising fees for criminal barristers by 15%, can help end the logjam.

“Last year, we announced the largest funding increase for the justice system in more than a decade, solidifying our commitment to making sure it protects the public and supports victims,” a Ministry of Justice spokesperson said in response to Bloomberg questions.

The UK government also wants to raise the retirement age for judges, open new so-called Nightingale temporary courts and endow lower judges with more powers to impose bigger sentences. But without more funding, that’s likely only temporary relief.

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The issue has become political. With the Conservatives dropping in the polls, Labour is accusing the ruling party of compromising public safety by removing over 10,000 prison cells over the last decade.

Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Justice Steve Reed wants to extend temporary courts and set up specialist tribunals to speed up the average three years it takes for a rape case to get heard.

“The scale of the breakdown is immense,” he said. “It’s gonna take a long time to reinvest in all of our broken public services.”

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