Courts: Delays still above pre-Covid levels
Delays in the county courts continue to fall – and sharply, according to the latest official figures from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).
The latest civil justice statistics showed that the median time taken for small claims to go from issue to trial in the first quarter of 2026 was 37.6 weeks, more than five weeks faster than the same period in 2025.
For fast, intermediate and multi-track claims, it took 54.3 weeks to reach a trial, nearly 11 weeks faster than in the first quarter of 2025.
The MoJ has only reported on median wait times since 2022, having previously just used the mean figure.
On the latter measure – which can be skewed by extremes – the average wait for small claims was 46.2 weeks, three and a half weeks less than in 2025. For other claims, it was 68.6 weeks, six weeks less.
However, the mean figures are still both around nine weeks slower than Q4 2019, the last period unaffected by Covid.
Total county court claims have been steadily increasing over the last five years, and this continued in the first three months of 2026, up 7% to 527,000.
The number of personal injury claims continued to fall, down 23% in the year from 15,000 to 11,000 in the quarter.
The statistics also showed the slow take-up of the intermediate track, with 732 cases allocated to it in the first quarter, a similar level to every quarter of 2025. This accounts for just 2% of all allocations, “although these are expected to increase as the new track is embedded”, the MoJ said.
There were 1,305 applications for judicial review received in Q1 2026, the highest figure since the end of 2012, when the majority of immigration and asylum cases were transferred to the Upper Tribunal.
Of this year’s applications, 490 related to immigration and asylum and 780 other civil matters – both double the number of the first quarter of 2025 – and 32 were criminal matters.
Only 209 of them reached the permission stage in the quarter, of which 42 were granted, 123 refused and 44 withdrawn or where the outcome was unknown.
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