Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

AI, Remote Hearings and Case Management: Efficiency Reforms to Address the Criminal Courts Capacity Crisis in England and Wales (Part 2)

Published on: 18 February 2026

Published by a LexisNexis Corporate Crime expert

Legal News

Article summary

Key findings

Although his conclusions are spread across 11 chapters and more than 700 pages, the backdrop to both the Efficiency Review and the Policy Review is a criminal justice system in a crisis of such scale and urgency that it cannot be fixed within current resources. Sir Brian depicts a service gravely short of capacity, from frontline practitioners and wider staff to a court estate blighted by chronic underinvestment, carrying a £1.3bn maintenance backlog, with premises ill-suited to contemporary needs. Digitisation sits at the heart of Sir Brian’s plan. AI is cast as essential to boosting efficiency throughout the system, and, on remote participation, he notes clear scope for far wider use.

Main recommendations AI

Sir Brian urges the adoption of AI, particularly to raise efficiency, aid decision-making, and modernise listing and case-management systems. Steering clear of naming specific platforms, he instead outlines technology categories and functional capabilities for the criminal courts. For instance, a national digital scheduling tool embedded in the Common Platform would bring together all listing data...

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