Each year, the Government and the senior judiciary work to agree the sitting day allocations and overall funding envelope for His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. This joint approach ensures transparency, supports long-term planning, and enables the system to operate within a realistic and sustainable framework.
Following extensive engagement with the Lady Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals, the Judicial Office, I can confirm that we have reached a landmark settlement for 2026-27. This settlement ensures that courts and tribunals are equipped to operate at, or close to, maximum capacity.
For 2026-27, the Ministry of Justice will provide £2,785 million of total funding—£2,498 million fiscal resource and £287 million in fiscal capital funding. This represents a record investment in our courts and tribunals.
I will continue to increase the allocation in coming years. This settlement provides an unprecedented ability to plan for the long term. While this agreement formally governs the 2026-27 financial year, I have established firm funding commitments through to 2028-29 across all jurisdictions. By providing this three-year horizon, I am enabling HMCTS to plan more effectively, recruit with confidence, and begin to address outstanding caseloads with the stability that only multi-year certainty can provide.
The Crown court backlog continues to rise and stands at over 79,000 cases. My focus, as I have said to the House, is on victims who are being left to wait three, four or five years for their day in court. Central to this allocation, then, is the uncapping of the sitting day allocation for the Crown court for the next financial year, removing any financial constraint on the rate at which HMCTS operates. This will allow the Crown court to sit at record high levels, hearing as many cases as possible, getting swifter justice for victims and tackling the Crown court backlog. Combined with our court reform plans, this investment will help to turn the tide on the open caseload, enabling the system to move to a more sustainable footing over the period.
Beyond the uncapped capacity provided for the Crown court, this settlement delivers significant resources across all other jurisdictions. For magistrates courts, I am funding an allocation of 125,800 sitting days for the next financial year, up from 114,000 in the current financial year, and I am funding increases each year thereafter, with a target of 131,000 days in the final year. I have also set money aside for additional sitting days up to 140,000 in the final year of this spending review period if the system is able to deliver this.
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