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<p>The number of days sat in the Crown Court for each of the court circuits in England
and Wales in (a) 2017, (b) 2018 and (c) 2019 are set out in the attached spreadsheet.</p><p>Sitting
days are based on the number of cases we expect the court to hear and, with fewer
cases making it to the Crown Court, were reduced accordingly. The number of outstanding
Crown Court cases has reduced by almost 40% since 2014.</p><p>We keep sitting days
under constant review and in November allocated an extra 850 days to the Crown Court
to ease immediate pressure on the court. We have allocated a minimum of 87,000 to
inform listing decisions in the first half of 2020/21 which is an increase of 4,700
on last year’s allocation.</p><p><strong>Notes:</strong></p><ul><li><p>The attached
HMCTS data covers the number of days in which a Crown Court room was sat by any number
of judges.</p><p> </p></li><li><p>In some circumstances, judges will ‘share’ a courtroom
to conduct judicial business; in most instances this will involve a returning judge
for sentencing purposes only. These figures may therefore differ from the number of
<em>judicial sitting days</em> at Crown Court as published in MoJ official statistics
(which can, for example, also include days sat in chambers).</p></li></ul><p> </p><p>The
information for 2019 covers January to March, as the National Statistics on judge
sitting days for 2019 are due to be released in June 2020. Access to statistics before
their publication is strictly controlled, with rules and principles on pre-release
access set out in the Pre-release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008.</p>
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