Annex B: New methodology for end-to-end timeliness in Criminal Courts (experimental statistics)
Source: data.gov.uk (2018-05-25)

Criminal Court Statistics. This publication provides aggregated data on workload, effectiveness and timeliness in magistrates courts and the Crown Court. It is designed to provide a summary overview of the volume and types of cases dealt with by courts over time. The data available includes receipts, disposals and outstanding cases by case type, effective, ineffective and cracked trials, plea information, waiting times, hearing times and duration of cases from offence to completion by case type and offence. It is produced on a quarterly basis with extra information included in the June annual publication, such as unrepresented defendants, juror sitting days and election of the defendant.

Annex B 
 
Experimental Statistics:  
New methodology for end-to-end 
timeliness in criminal courts 
 
April to June 2016  
 
 
 
Ministry of Justice 
 
 
Published 29th September 2016  
 
 

 
Contents  
 
Introduction 
Analysis of impacts (based on Q2 2016 data) 
Contacts

 
Introduction 
Following a consultation in early 2015, a proposal was agreed to make changes to 
the end-to-end case timeliness methodology applied within the Criminal Courts 
Statistics Quarterly (CCSQ) publication. The proposed change was to remove the 
10 year threshold from the validation scripts applied to published estimates. We 
confirmed our intention, in our most recent bulletin released in June 2016, to 
implement the changes within this release on 29 September 2016. 
 
As part of this publication, tables based on both the existing and new 
methodologies have been produced. The tables containing statistics based on the 
existing methodology are labelled ‘Table T1’ up to ‘Table T6b’, whilst tables 
containing statistics based on the new methodology are labelled as ‘Annex T1’ up 
to ‘Annex T6b’. 
 
This annex document aims to provide users with a detailed explanation of the 
change in approach and comparisons between statistics produced under the two 
methodologies. 
 
Experimental statistics 
 
The statistics produced using the new methodology are badged as "experimental 
statistics" and do not display the National Statistics logo, as data are still being 
evaluated and remain subject to further testing in terms of their reliability and ability 
to meet customer needs.  
 
Subject to user feedback on these experimental statistics, the intention is to 
produce both methodologies for this release only, after which we will only present 
statistics and commentary based solely on the new methodology. 
 
Summary of methodology change 
 
The existing end-to-end timeliness methodology is described within ‘A guide to 
criminal court statistics’, which is published alongside this report. This covers the 
data sources, data matching, quality assurance and data cleaning processes, 
including the removal of cases with recorded durations of over ten years as a 
means of ensuring the average times reported are not distorted by incorrect data.  
 
The methodology change applied to new estimates within this annex is to remove 
the 10 year threshold from the validation scripts. This change of approach includes 
cases validly taking over 10 years to progress from offence to completion in court, 
but with the introduction of additional quality assurance checks applied to cases 
falling in this category to safeguard against the inclusion of incorrect data within the 
calculation. The methodology thus excludes a small number of cases with identified 
data quality issues, alongside breach cases. 
 
 

 
Analysis of impacts (based on Q2 2016 data) 
Change to volume of defendants included within the measure 
 
By including cases taking over 10 years from offence to completion, there are 
approximately 500 to 700 additional defendants included within the calculation of 
average timeliness measures each quarter. For context, Figure 1 below shows the 
number of defendants included in the overall timeliness measure (for cases 
completing at each tier of court) in Q2 2016 by their length of time from offence to 
completion. 
 
Figure 1: Volume of defendants included in overall timeliness measure for all completed 
criminal cases (underpinning statistics in table ‘Annex T5’), by duration of offence to 
completion, Q2 2016 
 
Offence to 
completion length 
Number of 
defendants 
Proportion of 
defendants 
Less than 5 years 
365,826 
99.6% 
5 to 10 years 
670 
0.2% 
10 years and over 
666 
0.2% 
of which: 
  
  
10 - 20 years 
326 
  
20 - 30 years 
145 
  
30 - 40 years 
         134 
  
40 - 50 years 
53 
  
50 - 60 years 
8 
  
Total 
367,162 
100% 
 
Further, approximately three-quarters of the additional defendants included in the 
new methodology in Q2 2016 were accused of a sexual offence (503 out of 6561), 
which constituted a 20% increase in the number of defendants contributing towards 
timeliness figures for sexual offences. Figure 2 below shows the number of 
defendants included in the overall timeliness measure for both the existing and new 
methodologies by offence group. 
                                                          
1 Note the new methodology also excludes a small number of cases with durations shorter than ten years with 
identified data quality issues. This explains why the difference between the number of defendants included 
within each methodology (656) is not equal to the number of defendants with cases taking 10 years or over to 
complete (666) as shown in Figure 1. 

 
 
Figure 2: Defendants included in the existing and new overall timeliness measure for all 
completed criminal cases (underpinning statistics in tables T5 and ‘Annex T5’), by offence 
group, Q2 2016 
 
Offence group 
Defendants 
included in 
existing 
methodology 
(T5) * 
Defendants 
included in 
new 
methodology 
(Annex T5) 
Additional 
defendants in 
new 
methodology * 
Percent 
increase in 
defendants 
included 
Violence against the person 
9,471 
9,491 
20 
0.2% 
Sexual offences 
2,579 
3,082 
503 
19.5% 
Robbery 
1,750 
1,751 
1 
0.1% 
Theft offences 
31,301 
31,304 
3 
0.0% 
Criminal damage and arson 
811 
812 
1 
0.1% 
Drug offences 
12,679 
12,680 
1 
0.0% 
Possession of weapons 
3,400 
3,400 
- 
0.0% 
Public order offences 
4,569 
4,570 
1 
0.0% 
Miscellaneous crimes against 
society 
8,071 
8,089 
18 
0.2% 
Fraud offences 
2,941 
2,992 
51 
1.7% 
Summary non-motoring 
151,627 
151,663 
36 
0.0% 
Summary motoring 
137,307 
137,328 
21 
0.0% 
All criminal cases 
366,506 
367,162 
656 
0.2% 
* Note the new methodology also excludes a small number of cases with durations shorter than ten years with identified data 
quality issues. This explains why the difference between the number of defendants included within each methodology (656) is 
not equal to the number of defendants with cases taking 10 years or over to complete (666) as shown in Figure 1. 
 
Comparison of timeliness statistics under the existing methodology 
(exclusion of long cases) and the new methodology (inclusion of long cases)  
 
Summary 
 
By including cases with a duration of over 10 years, more historical offences are 
included within the measure, and as a result, the mean duration of cases has 
increased. This particularly affects the pre-court stage of offence to charge. There 
are also some increases in the charge to completion stage, as the offences newly 
included are offences from more serious categories (the majority sexual offences), 
which are often more complex cases and take longer on average to proceed 
through the courts. 
 
Cases completing at magistrates’ courts, including cases committed to the Crown 
Court (tables T2 and Annex T2a) 
 
For cases completing in the magistrates’ courts in Q2 2016, the (mean) average 
duration for offence to completion increased by 15 days, from 162 days when cases 
over 10 years were excluded to 177 days when longer cases were included. 
 

 
Cases completing at the Crown Court (tables T4 and Annex T4) 
 
For cases completing at the Crown Court in Q2 2016, the (mean) average duration 
for offence to completion increased by over 7 months (218 days), from 359 days 
when cases over 10 years were excluded to 576 days when longer cases were 
included. 
 
The impact on median time was much smaller; the median average duration for 
offence to completion for cases completing at the Crown Court in Q2 2016 
increased by 8 days, from 249 days under the existing methodology compared to 
257 days under the new methodology. 
 
By stage – for cases completing at the Crown Court (tables T4 and Annex T4) 
 
The difference in mean durations was quite marked at different court stages, as 
shown in Figure 3 below. 
 
Figure 3: Mean (average) days from offence to completion for cases completing at the Crown 
Court, Q2 2016 
 
The main impact of including longer cases was on the pre-court stage of offence to 
charge, which increased by over 7 months (214 days) from 151 days when longer 
cases were excluded to 365 days when they were included.  
At the Crown Court stage, there was only a small effect when cases over 10 years 
were included. The average (mean) time from receipt by the Crown Court to 
completion increased by 3 days from 180 days at Q2 2016 when longer cases were 
excluded, to 183 days when longer cases were included. These increases are likely 
to be driven by longer cases being made up of more serious cases and therefore 
taking slightly more court time on average. 
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
Offence to charge
Charge to first
listing
First listing to
completion in the
magistrates' court
Sending to the
Crown Court to
main hearing
Main hearing to
completion
Mean days
Existing methodology
New methodology

 
By offence type – for all criminal cases (tables T6a and Annex T6a) 
The main impact of including longer cases was on the mean duration of sexual 
offence cases; in Q2 2016, the mean offence to completion for sexual offence 
cases increased by approximately 4 years (1,429 days), from 1.5 years (545 days) 
when longer cases were excluded to 5.5 years (1,973 days) when longer cases 
were included. 
Figure 4: Mean days from offence to completion for all criminal cases (based on T6a and 
Annex T6a), Q2 2016 
 
The biggest impact on sexual offence cases was at the pre-court stage, offence to 
charge, which increased by 1,408 days (approximately 4 years), whilst charge to 
first listing increased by 2 days and first listing to completion increased by 19 days. 
0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
Mean days
Existing methodology
New methodology

 
Contacts 
 
Press enquiries on the contents of this annex should be directed to the Ministry of 
Justice or Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) press offices: 
 
Ministry of Justice News Desk  
Tel: xx-xxxx-xxxx 
Email: xxx@xxx.xx 
Other enquiries about these statistics should be directed to the Justice Statistics 
Analytical Services division of the Ministry of Justice: 
 
David Jagger 
Ministry of Justice 
102 Petty France 
London 
SW1H 9AJ 
Email: xxx@xxx.xx 
General enquiries about the statistics work of the Ministry of Justice can be emailed 
to xxx@xxx.xx 
General information about the official statistics system of the UK is available from 
www.statistics.gov.uk 
Feedback 
If you have any feedback on the changes to the methodology, or the report more 
generally, please contact the production team through the Justice Statistics Analytical 
Services division of the Ministry of Justice: 
Email: xxx@xxx.xx 
© Crown copyright 
Produced by the Ministry of Justice 
Alternative formats are available on request from 
xxx@xxx.xx