Rape cases now take a record 386 days to work through the courts, new figures show, as Labour continues to dither on clearing justice system backlog

Published: 08:28 EDT, 5 November 2026 | Updated: 08:28 EDT, 5 November 2026 Waiting times for rape trials to reach a conclusion in court have hit a record high under Labour.The delays mean agonising waits for victims in the wake of the Government’s dithering over how to address the spiralling court backlog.New official figures, published on Thursday, showed the length of time between an adult rape case arriving in the court system and reaching completion has hit 386 days on average.The figure, for the second quarter of this year, was up 61 days since Labour came to power in July 2024.That included a 22-day increase on the first quarter of this year.Separate figures on the time between a rape suspect being charged and a case concluding in the courts showed a 409-day average wait.It was up from 384 days in the previous quarter, and only slightly below the peak of 416 days in the second quarter of 2021, when courts were still reeling from Covid pandemic shutdowns.For all types of crime the average waiting time from charge to completion was 189 days, the latest figures showed. The court backlog has soared by nearly 100,000 cases since the General Election, hitting a record high of more than 460,000It was up from 176 just before the General Election but remains below the peak of 222 days at the end of 2021.Labour spent more than two years drawing up plans to address the backlog, which has hit a record high of more than 80,000 cases in the Crown courts in England and Wales.But Prime Minister Andy Burnham last month ditched the most controversial element of the plan.It would have seen jury trial ditched in thousands of cases a year, with trials heard by a judge sitting alone.Labour is still pressing ahead with other proposals to hold judge-only trials in ‘complex and lengthy cases’The measures will initially apply to fraud cases but the Criminal Bar Association, representing more than 3,000 defence barristers, said they could eventually be extended far more widely and risks the creation of a ‘two-tier justice system’.The court backlog has soared by nearly 100,000 cases since the General Election, hitting a record high of more than 460,000.There were 80,829 cases waiting to be heard in the Crown courts at the end of June.And in the magistrates’ courts the figure was 380,230, up nine per cent in a year.It gave a combined backlog of 461,059, up 98,725 on the figure at the end of June 2024, a few days before Labour came to power.The Ministry of Justice was approached for comment.