Executive Summary

Why we did this review

ES.1 Between April and June 2024, HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) identified inaccuracies in the Crown Court data that are used to produce HMCTS’s monthly management information and MoJ’s quarterly accredited official statistics on the criminal court system in England and Wales.

ES.2 MoJ subsequently cancelled the June 2024 and September 2024 statistics releases and HMCTS stopped using the data internally. Since then, HMCTS and MoJ have worked together to investigate and resolve issues with the quality of the data used to report the Crown Court caseload. HMCTS and MoJ have also worked to align the methodologies that they use to produce the management information and official statistics to create a single and consistent Crown Court dataset.

ES.3 Due to the concerns about the inaccuracies in the Crown Court data, we undertook a review of the quality of MoJ’s criminal court statistics against the Code of Practice for Statistics. Our review considered whether MoJ can continue to publish the statistics as accredited official statistics.

What we found

ES.4 We are confident in the quality of MoJ’s criminal court statistics and are satisfied that MoJ has provided sufficient assurances to users about the quality of Crown Court data. Consequently, we judge that the statistics can retain their accredited official statistics status. In doing this review, we identified two recommendations that MoJ should address to enhance the quality of the statistics.

ES.5 We commend MoJ and HMCTS on their collaborative approach to investigating and addressing the Crown Court data quality issues. There is now a better shared understanding of the data and case management systems and stronger working relationships between MoJ and HMCTS. We encourage MoJ and HMCTS to extend the learnings from criminal court data to family and civil court data.

ES.6 HMCTS and MoJ’s investigation identified a range of causes for the Crown Court data inaccuracies, including human error, technical issues and data coding issues. One issue was how users of Common Platform were recording the closure of cases on the system: court staff were recording the final result for an offence in a free text field instead of using defined result codes. HMCTS informed us that the design of Common Platform inadvertently led to this operational error, despite guidance asking staff not to use the system in this way. This issue was fixed in August 2024, ensuring that free text fields can no longer be used to record the final result.

ES.7 To assure themselves that the data quality issues have been resolved and that the management information and official statistics accurately represent the source data, HMCTS and MoJ conducted extensive data validation. HMCTS took a systematic and rigorous approach to data validation, working with operational and service teams to conduct two complementary checks to investigate the data quality issues.

ES.8 MoJ carried out its own analysis to check the cases that HMCTS had identified for investigation against the published official statistics. It also made improvements to the Common Platform data pipeline to address an issue with cases not being accurately identified as entering the Crown Court.

ES.9 MoJ determined that the overall impact of these two quality improvements on trends in the Crown Court caseload statistics was minimal. MoJ has been transparent with users about the approach and outcomes of HMCTS’s and MoJ’s data validation work.

ES.10 To support ongoing monitoring and validation of Crown Court cases, HMCTS worked with operational, policy and analytical experts to develop routine data quality reporting. We welcome that HMCTS has built on the success of the data validation by introducing new routine reporting. This has enhanced quality assurance and will help ensure that unusual cases are identified early and errors are corrected quickly, which will improve the quality of Crown Court data in the long term.

ES.11 Concurrently with our review, the Lord Chancellor commissioned KPMG to carry out an external review of the methodology and process that MoJ uses to produce the Crown Court caseload statistics. The review’s headline finding is that MoJ can have significant confidence its Crown Court caseload statistics. This echoes the findings of our review and provides additional assurance about the quality of MoJ’s official statistics.

ES.12 MoJ effectively communicated the decision to cancel the release of the June 2024 statistics. At that point, it did not have a clear picture of the scale of the data quality issue. By cancelling the statistics, MoJ avoided the risk of misleading users about trends in the published criminal court statistics. It is good that MoJ immediately and proactively raised its data quality concerns with us.

ES.13 Until recently, MoJ and HMCTS maintained separate versions of the data used for reporting, analysing and modelling the Crown Court caseload. This practice at times has resulted in differences between the figures in the management information produced by HMCTS and the official statistics published by MoJ. To address this lack of coherence in the Crown Court data, HMCTS and MoJ established the One Crown data project (One Crown), which aimed to align their methodologies to create a single dataset. This has enhanced the coherence of HMCTS’s management information and MoJ’s official statistics.

ES.14 One Crown has deepened HMCTS’s and MoJ’s understanding of Crown Court data and the systems that underpin them. We welcome MoJ’s openness and transparency on the decision making, methodologies and impact of One Crown, and its engagement with users about the changes. To inform users about the decisions made in the One Crown project, MoJ should consider publishing a full summary of the changes and their impact on the statistics.

ES.15 MoJ publishes two quality documents alongside the statistics: the quality statement and the guide to criminal court statistics (user guide). These documents contain clear and detailed information about many aspects of quality, including MoJ’s quality assurance arrangements. However, there are gaps in quality information, in particular, on HMCTS’s quality assurance arrangements and the strengths and limitations of the Common Platform system in relation to data quality.

Recommendation 1: To assure users about all aspects of data quality, MoJ should expand, and routinely review, its quality information. The published documents should cover:

• HMCTS’s quality assurance arrangements
• HMCTS’s and MoJ’s roles and responsibilities in collecting and processing data
• the strengths and limitations of Common Platform in relation to data quality
• the proportion of the caseload on legacy systems and the timeline for decommissioning legacy systems

ES.16 The quality statement provides clear advice for users on interpreting the statistics. However, not all users will read the quality documentation, and the statistical bulletin contains little commentary about data limitations and uncertainty.

Recommendation 2: To help users interpret the statistics, MoJ should include caveats and explanations of uncertainty alongside the statistics in the statistical bulletin.

Next steps

ES.17 MoJ has committed to implementing the recommendations in the June 2025 release of the statistics. We will continue to engage with MoJ and HMCTS about the quality of the criminal court data and statistics.