Friday 11 April 2025

A weekly round-up of the latest news and information about courts and tribunals

Courts and tribunals opening times over Easter

Our courts and tribunals will temporarily close over the Easter period, from Friday 18 April to Monday 21 April 2025. They will reopen on Tuesday 22 April 2025.

Some magistrates’ courts will be open on Saturday 19 April and Monday 21 April 2025, but for remand hearings only.

Court and tribunal fees increases

Changes have been introduced to selected court and tribunal fees, with 171 fees increased and 24 reduced. The changes came into force on Tuesday 8 April 2025 for applications received by courts or tribunals on or after that date.

Open day at Norwich Combined Court

Come along to our court open day in Norwich on Thursday 17 April 2025 to learn more about our courts and how we deliver justice.

You’ll be able to go behind the scenes, speak to our justice partners, watch a mock trial, meet a sniffer dog, tour the court cells and much more.

Visit our Bradford open day

Bradford Combined Court will be opening its doors to the public for the second time on Saturday 10 May 2025. For many, attending court is likely to be an unusual and intimidating experience, whether this is as a witness, defendant, party or juror.

Visitors will have the chance to see how trials work in court, join a mock trial, explore police equipment, speak with our justice partners and experience much more.

A month in HMCTS

Our latest short video summarises news highlights from March with an overview of the formal conclusion of our Reform Programme including our recently released podcast, blogs, videos and reformed services data.

We also feature an increase in Crown Court sitting days and a two-part blog series looking at challenges facing our criminal courts and how we're addressing them.

Monthly management information

Our latest monthly management information for February 2024 to February 2025 is now available.

It includes workload volumes and timeliness at a national level for our civil and family courts, and tribunals.

Changes to contacting magistrates’ courts

As part of our commitment to modernising court services through a truly centralised system we’re moving all phone enquiries for magistrates' courts in England and Wales to our Courts and Tribunals Service Centres.

Our Service Centres play a vital role in delivering justice smoother and more efficiently, allowing for faster processing times, consistent service across all locations, greater flexibility and court-based staff can focus on addressing local issues.

Callers can contact the Magistrates Contact Centre on 0330 8084 407 and the Single Justice Procedure on 0300 303 0656. 

A modernised digital case management system

As of February 2025, over 2.3 million criminal cases have been managed on Common Platform, HMCTS' bespoke digital case management system. 

Our recently published case study explains how we have transformed our case management system to adapt to the requirements of our services and to have greater flexibility to adapt the system to changing needs and technological developments.  

Single Justice Procedure case study

Over 1.1 million Single Justice Procedure (SJP) cases have been completed digitally between April 2017 and 31 December 2024, benefitting from faster justice, quicker information sharing and consistent service.

We've published a case study exploring the process of introducing the Automated Track Case Management digital service used to help process SJP cases and how this benefits the justice system.

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