The government is constantly assessing how to improve the efficiency within the criminal justice system, including mechanisms to accelerate trial transcripts.

We recognise the potential merits to using automated technology for trial transcriptions, including a potential reduction in the time it takes to produce a transcription and comparative value for money.

Transcriptions must achieve very high levels of accuracy (99.5%) to ensure the justice system can operate fairly and effectively. However, even software with learning capability cannot yet reliably meet the accuracy requirements for the service without human intervention.

As of the end of June 2023 the number of outstanding cases at Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton Magistrates’ Courts are as follows:

a) Dudley Magistrates' Court: 1,017

b) Walsall Magistrates' Court: 779

c) Wolverhampton Magistrates' Court: 935

This is a further breakdown of published data that can be found in the criminal court statistics quarterly publication: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2023.

The volume of outstanding ‘for trial’ cases at the magistrates’ courts is published as part of the National Statistics series ‘Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly’.

The latest published data is available to March 2023 and can be found in Table M1 which is accessible at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2023.

The statutory responsibility for issuing guidance to the judiciary is held by the Lord Chief Justice, the Senior President of Tribunals, and the Chief Coroner. To preserve the independence of the judiciary, they are not subject to direction or required to consult the government on the guidance they issue.

The total amount of unassessed probate cases where evidence has been received to enable a case to be assessed is 12,923.

4805 of these cases are over 6 weeks since the date the evidence was received.

In addition, there are 38,245 cases which are either waiting for evidence, such as the original will, to arrive, are subject to a legal hold following an application from another party or have been stopped due to an error or missing documentation and are waiting for a response from the applicant.

HMCTS has increased resources to meet the higher demand following an increased number of estates requiring probate and is further increasing resourcing to further bring down overall timeliness on digital and paper applications.

The improvement of the online probate system remains a priority for HMCTS, to ensure more applications can be issued first time and resources can be focused on reducing waiting times.