The Ministry of Justice said on 4 October that it will amend the Courts and Tribunals Bill to drop the wider expansion of judge-only trials in the Crown Court, while accelerating the rest of its criminal court reform package before the Bill returns to the House of Commons on 13 October 2026. The department presented the change as a response to concern about jury trial proposals and as a route to start other reforms earlier. (gov.uk) Alex Norris, the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, said he had listened to the strength of feeling around broader judge-alone trials and wanted the government’s focus to stay on cutting delay. The official position is that victims should see earlier movement on the backlog rather than wait for a wider redesign of Crown Court trial arrangements. (gov.uk)
The practical effect is narrower than a full retreat. The original Bill, introduced on 25 February 2026, contained two separate judge-alone routes: a proposed Crown Court Bench Division for certain either-way cases with likely sentences of up to three years, and a separate power for suitably technical and lengthy fraud and financial cases to be tried without a jury. The government now says it will remove the Bench Division but retain the fraud and financial case provision. (gov.uk) Other structural measures remain in scope. Ministers still want courts, rather than defendants, to make the final allocation decision in triable either-way cases, and they still want powers to extend magistrates’ sentencing capacity up to 18 or 24 months for single and multiple triable either-way offences. According to the Ministry of Justice factsheet, the Bill also keeps planned changes to magistrates’ court appeals. (gov.uk)
The backdrop is an overloaded Crown Court. Ministry of Justice statistics published on 24 September showed 80,829 open Crown Court cases at the end of June 2026, with 23,706 cases, or 31 per cent of the total, open for a year or more. The same quarterly release showed the median time from charge to completion in the Crown Court at 189 days, rising to 445 days for defendants dealt with by jury trial after a not guilty plea. (gov.uk) Those figures explain why ministers are stressing changes that keep more work away from the Crown Court and shorten listing pressure. In the Ministry of Justice’s updated impacts appendix, the department says reforms implemented in 2027 rather than 2028 would affect the backlog sooner, even after removal of the Bench Division. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk)
The policy reversal also resets one of the Bill’s most disputed elements. The House of Commons Library said immediate reaction to the legislation focused heavily on the jury trial clauses, which had drawn significant opposition from parliamentarians and the legal profession. A separate Justice Committee report questioned whether the government had shown a clear enough evidential basis for broader judge-only trials and warned about uncertainty over how such cases would be defined and reviewed. (commonslibrary.parliament.uk) This matters legislatively because the government is not abandoning structural reform altogether. Instead, it is narrowing the jury trial changes while keeping the wider case-allocation and court-capacity programme built from Sir Brian Leveson’s criminal courts review. The Ministry of Justice published Part 1 of that review in July 2025 and Part 2 in February 2026. (gov.uk)
In operational terms, the department is pairing legislative change with court administration reform. Sarah Sackman said the forthcoming response to Lord Leveson’s report will cover measures such as AI-assisted listing, wider virtual hearings and steps to reduce failures to attend court. Separate Ministry of Justice announcements in 2026 have already outlined AI tools for listing and transcription as part of a broader productivity programme across HMCTS. (gov.uk) Government modelling published alongside the revised impacts note says the Bench Division will be removed, but that faster implementation of the remaining reforms could still help turn the backlog. In practice, the emphasis is shifting from a new judge-alone tier in the Crown Court to quicker allocation, higher magistrates’ sentencing powers and administrative efficiency. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk)
The government has also added an equality assurance to the package. When the Bill returns, ministers say they will place a statutory duty on themselves to consider the effects of the structural reforms on ethnic minorities and people from different backgrounds, with that work led by an independent reviewer. That sits alongside the equalities material already published for the Bill under the Equality Act 2010 duties. (gov.uk) That commitment is relevant politically as well as procedurally. The Ministry of Justice’s equalities statement acknowledges long-standing gaps in ethnicity data across court systems and says impacts will need continuing review as reforms are developed and implemented. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk)
For court users, the immediate message is narrower jury reform but faster movement on the rest of the programme. Defendants in technical and lengthy fraud or financial cases could still face judge-alone trial, while a larger share of mid-level criminal work may remain in magistrates’ courts if sentencing powers increase and the right to opt for Crown Court trial is curtailed. Victims and witnesses, meanwhile, are being promised earlier action against delay rather than a wait for a wider redesign of Crown Court trials. (gov.uk) The next procedural marker is 13 October 2026, when the Bill is due back in the Commons. The government has also said its full response to both parts of the Leveson review will follow in the coming weeks, which should show how much of the remaining court-efficiency programme will be pursued through primary legislation and how much through operational change. (gov.uk)