Justice minister Lucy Frazer QC announced a consultation on a further eight court building closures in a ministerial statement on 18 January 2018. The courts earmarked for closure are:

The consultation document, Fit for the future: transforming the court and tribunal estate, sets out the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ’s) proposed strategy for HM Courts and Tribunals Service. The first part of the document discusses the digital reform programme, which includes increasing ‘virtual hearing’ capacity.

While the MoJ accepts that most criminal trials and sentencing hearings will still take place in a physical court room, it says many other types of hearing, such as ‘suitable remand cases’, will rely on digital channels. According to the document, the virtual hearing capacity in the Immigration and Asylum Chamber was subject to ‘technical testing’ in October last year, and the MoJ says it will ‘continue to test and develop virtual hearings’ this year, starting with ‘straightforward case management hearings’.

The MoJ outlines what it sees as the success of the new digital services it has been introducing. One service user quoted in the document said the online divorce service was ‘marvellous, pain free and less stressful than the paper form’. Another example cited by the MoJ is the replacement of the help with fees form with an online service. According to the MoJ, this received an 86 per cent satisfaction rating from users.

The coalition government initiated the Court Estate Reform Programme in 2010 and, as the document notes, this led to the closure of 140 courts (92 magistrates’ courts and 48 county courts). Following the further consultation launched in July 2015, the MoJ says it will close a further 121 court and tribunal buildings, reducing the total number to 339.

The latest consultation document gives an assessment of the effect on travel times to the courts and tribunals of the implementation of the closure programme, which was announced in February 2016 and is ongoing. Evidence from the 2016 consultation suggests most court users (97–98 per cent) are still within an hour of their local court by car. However, travel times are now considerably longer for a number of public transport users, with only 74 per cent being within an hour’s travel to a magistrates’ court, down from 82 per cent before the closures.

‘In the space of eight years, we will have gone from over 600 court and tribunal buildings to an estate of 339. While some rationalisation might have been necessary, we cannot agree with the MoJ’s contention that it is acceptable for members of the public to have to travel for up to two hours on public transport to access their local court or tribunal,’ said LAG director Steve Hynes.

A question on the acceptability of the department’s proposed benchmark for travel times by public transport is the first of 10 posed in the document. The consultation ends on 29 March 2018.