Such is the havoc being wreaked by the pandemic upon a criminal justice system already on its knees that it is now taking four years for cases to be heard. Last month, members of the London Criminal Court Solicitors’ Association (LCCSA) provided details of cases stuck in limbo including a serious sexual offence alleged to have taken place in January 2018, involving (‘if true’) a traumatised teenage victim and a defendant, also in their teens, of ‘prior good character’ (‘Covid leading to four-year waits for England and Wales court trials’, The Guardian, 10 January 2021).
The court case began in February last year with a trial scheduled in the Crown Court earlier this year and has now been pushed back to February next year. ‘This implies that things are so bad this case was a lower priority [than others],’ complained an anonymous lawyer
