Last week, defendants in custody could not attend Isleworth Crown Court because the court’s cells were ‘too cold’.

Issues with heating resulted in freezing conditions in the cells at Isleworth on two days last week, causing significant delays in court proceedings as prisoners could not be produced to attend sentencing, hearings and trials.

Failures to deliver prisoners cause disruptions in court proceedings as trials are postponed or adjourned to ensure that defendants have the right to attend court. These incidents exacerbate the ongoing backlog crisis in the criminal justice system.

As a result of the uninhabitable cells, courtrooms were left unused for significant periods on the 19 and 20 November. Last year the Ministry of Justice reported that the daily cost of a Crown Court sitting day is £3,036 excluding the costs of corporate overheads and the spending by legal aid or the Crown Prosecution Service.

In December 2022, a similar incident occurred at Isleworth Crown Court. Idle Courts, an account that records the use of courts in England, reported that ‘all [defendants] in custody were taken back to prison after lunch as the temperature had dropped below that permissible in the cells’.

The temperature continues to be an interfering factor within the English and Welsh criminal justice system as courtrooms which are either too hot or too cold prevent trials from being heard, adding to the ever-growing backlog of cases and leaving victims and defendants waiting years for justice.