Every Crown Court in England and Wales will have at least one courtroom dedicated to rape and serious sexual-offence cases within the next two years, Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced on 21 September. Under an unspecified multimillion-pound investment, specialist courtrooms will provide private entrances and waiting areas intended to prevent victims from encountering defendants or their supporters. They will also contain facilities through which victims can pre-record evidence and observe sentencing remotely.
Rape and serious sexual offence trials will receive fixed hearing dates rather than being placed on ‘floating lists’, under which cases can be postponed at short notice and delayed for months. The change comes after Labour MP Charlotte Nichols told the Commons in March about the lengthy delay she faced after publicly disclosing her own rape.
‘I care profoundly about rape victims facing intolerable delays for their day in court’, she stated during the parliamentary debate. ‘I know only too well what that feels like, because, after being raped at an event that I attended in my capacity as a Member of Parliament, I waited 1,088 days to go to court’. The government credited Nichols’ ‘immense strength and bravery’ in publicly recounting her experience and advocating for reform.
Prime Minister Burnham described rape prosecution rates as ‘shamefully low’ and said victims had been let down by the justice system for too long.
The reforms will also include trauma-informed training for court staff, a pilot scheme giving victims a single point of contact during proceedings, and a new Rape Justice Taskforce charged with reducing postponed trials and confronting myths that cause victims to withdraw from cases.
The specialist courts will operate as designated courtrooms within the existing Crown Court estate rather than as a separate judicial system. Their effectiveness will consequently depend upon the availability of judges, barristers, prosecutors, court staff, and sitting days across an already overstretched system.
In a statement published by the Centre for Women’s Justice, solicitor Harriet Dowse-Bland welcomed the announcement, particularly the replacement of floating lists with fixed trial dates. She stated that fixed dates would provide victims with greater certainty but warned that the measures would not be sufficient to clear the existing backlog.
‘However, these measures alone will not be enough to clear the existing backlog of rape cases awaiting trial in the Crown Courts’, she cautioned. ‘Many victims are likely to still face significant delays, both at [the] police stage and through the courts, because of stretched resources within the police and the Crown Prosecution Service’.
Ministry of Justice figures cited by the Centre showed that over 80,000 Crown Court cases remained open in March 2026. Of these, 15,573, approximately 19%, concerned sexual offences.
There are also further reforms in the Courts and Tribunals Bill, which will return to the House of Commons in October. These include restrictions upon the use of victims’ earlier disclosures during cross-examination and provisions intended to ensure that previous domestic-abuse convictions can be considered as evidence of an accused person’s character.
The Bar Council and Criminal Bar Association had previously urged the government to establish specialist sexual-offence and domestic-abuse courts while retaining jury trials. The Courts and Tribunals Bill proposes removing defendants’ right to elect jury trial in certain either-way cases, with changes beginning in March 2028 at earliest.
The two organisations have also warned that court reform must be accompanied by investment in the barristers needed to prosecute and defend criminal cases. In May, they criticised the government’s delay in delivering additional criminal legal-aid funding. The number of silks deriving most of their income from criminal legal-aid work had fallen by nearly 25% since 2017–18, according to the Bar Council.
Victims’ Commissioner Claire Waxman welcomed the ‘long overdue’ commitment but warned that the Crown Court backlog had deteriorated significantly since she first proposed specialist courts in 2021.
The overall backlog has since grown by roughly one-third, including a record 15,573 outstanding sexual-offence cases. ‘Specialist courts alone will not be enough to tackle the scale of the delays or deliver the swift justice victims deserve’, she said.
