COVID & THE BACKLOG; Wales Governance Centre Webinar, 30th June 2020

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Although COVID-19 was yet to surface, the issue of underfunding was very much raised bythe Commission on Justice in Wales. Some of the recommendations of the Commission havebeen picked up by others, coincidentally or not, in response to the COVID-19 crisis.Having noted that the court estate in Wales had meandered for some time without anydiscernible strategy, the Commission recommended that a court estate strategy for Walesshould be identified and that that strategy should take into account the occasional use ofbuildings to house judicial proceedings.At paragraph 8.31 of the Report, the Commission noted that:“until well into the second half of the 20 th Century, courts sat in buildings that hadother purposes and were used from time to time as courts. One example was the useof the Council Chamber in the Swansea City Civic Buildings. In Wales, we see the returnto the use of such buildings, sometimes referred to as ‘pop up’ courts, as a necessarypart of the strategy”.The return to the use of such buildings as courts may happen sooner than the Commissionenvisaged.Part of the collaborative work that has taken place in Wales has been multi-agencyinvestigation into the use of Cardiff City Hall and the Swansea City Civic Buildings for use as‘Nightingale’ or, as the Lord Chancellor would prefer to call them, ‘Blackstone’ Courts.That collaborative work commenced earlier, has gone beyond that taken elsewhere andindeed has been used for modelling in other parts of the jurisdiction. And it will bear fruit, wehope, when the Lord Chancellor announces the location of the first ten sites for BlackstoneCourts shortly - another achievement that all can be proud of in Wales, demonstrative of ourability in Wales to work together and ‘get things done’.There is one further issue on the horizon that may need particular thought. The reservednature of criminal justice has meant that the challenges posed by COVID-19 to the criminaljustice system have been met thus far with “all England & Wales” solutions. We may yet find,however, divergence in the conditions in which the Crown Court must operate. Whilst justice6
is not devolved, public health is. England has already announced a move towards ‘1m plus’social distancing measures from early next month. It is yet to be seen the extent to which amove to ‘1m plus’ will affect the operation of the courts in England – whether, for example,we will see Perspex screens and facemasks appearing in the Crown Court in other parts of thejurisdiction to allow for the greater numbers of jury trials in the existing court estate thatcould be conducted at 1m distancing as opposed to 2m. It is not unforeseeable that, due todiffering public health measures, jury trials in England may soon end up looking like differentbeasts to those in Wales – a complexity of devolution that not even the Commission on Justicein Wales had the prescience to foresee. I hope instead that good lines of communicationbetween all interested parties will ensure that the criminal justice system in Wales stays atthe front of the fair and safe charge back to – and way beyond – its ‘normal capacity’.JONATHAN ELYSTAN REES QC7
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COVID & THE BACKLOG; Wales Governance Centre Webinar, 30th June 2020

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