Crumbling courts
Hundreds of crumbling courts and tribunals have outstanding repair jobs, new figures have revealed, as officials deal with thousands of new requests every month.
HM Courts & Tribunals Service, responding to the Gazette’s freedom of information request, confirmed that at the turn of the year 331 buildings had repair requests yet to be completed: this is 91% of all the 362 courts and tribunals across the estate, not including Nightingale courts.
Despite concerns that maintenance work might have been put on hold during the pandemic, HMCTS insists no jobs have been cancelled during lockdown. Nevertheless, the task of fixing buildings that have suffered from under-investment in previous years appears to be an onerous one, with the FOI response revealing that 5,000 new repair requests are raised every month across the estate.
