In July 2026, the Bar Council produced a report 'Barristers' observations on the late delivery of prisoners to court' which examined the 213 reports we received from barristers from courts across England and Wales between 12 February and 8 June 2026. Bar Chair Kirsty Brimelow KC examines the issue in greater depth, exploring the impact these delays have and what we hope to see change.
The scandal that swirls around every cell door at the Crown Court and is talked about in every robing room is the heavy delay caused to criminal justice by failures to deliver defendants from prison to court in a timely manner or at all. The Ministry of Justice’s disconnect with reality is underlined by its clinging onto a contractor performance statistic of 99.8% for delivering prisoners to court on time. This data might be a life raft for the Ministry of Justice, but it is surrounded by chaos and debris.
Driven to collate its own data, the Bar Council's new report 'Barristers' observations on the late delivery of prisoners to court report' illustrates grimly what is already known - that delays to court proceedings caused by the late delivery of individuals in custody are serious and widespread.
Over 4 months, we received more than 200 reports of delays from all 6 circuits in England and Wales, including 69 courts and 59 prisons. A quarter of reports (24%) said the delay was over 5 hours, 39% said the delay was between 30 minutes and two hours, and 34% said the delay was between 2 and 5 hours. Most delays were reported on the South Eastern Circuit with 70 reports from courts in London.
These numbers are a small (our reporting mechanism is still open) but significant snapshot and we know that the true extent of delays is much greater, so do continue to report.
When conducting his independent review, Sir Brian Leveson found the Prisoner Escort and Custody Service (PECS) to be a significant contributor to court inefficiency. According to official data, in 2025, the non-production of defendants by PECS accounted for 176 (2%) of ineffective trials in the Crown Court and 885 (4%) of ineffective trials in the magistrates’ courts.
How did we get here?
Defendants in custody are brought to court by PECS and are escorted from the cells into the dock. There are two contracts which commenced on 29 August 2020 and are worth a combined value of around £1.4 billion with spend over 10 years. The contractors are GeoAmey in the North (£632,000,000) and Serco in the South (£745,000,000). In the contracts is a requirement that prisoners are brought to court in sufficient time so as not to delay the operations of that court. PECS also should ensure that it has sufficient personnel on duty to undertake custodial duties.
However, there seems to be little consideration that a barrister needs to spend time with their client before the hearing. Also, it is a frequent occurrence that there are insufficient staff to bring defendants from the cells to the dock. Lack of information as to time of arrival is another unfathomable feature of the PECS service.
Penalties or “service credits” should be imposed for every 15 minutes of delay from court start time for which PECS is responsible. The amount of the penalty is over £600. However, the Ministry of Justice declines to publish the annual penalties, asserting it to be commercially sensitive.
The impact of delays
The impact of delays is obvious and fundamental and ripples through other cases waiting to be heard in the 80,000-case backlog in the Crown Courts.
In addition, when the defendant does arrive, they may have endured a very early start as the van makes stops around the country or transports to court from a distant prison. People can become increasingly stressed and ill as trials progress. One barrister told us that their heavily pregnant defendant was so distressed by the delays and miscommunication that they believe it led to her being hospitalised after the trial.
What next?
It is unfortunate that instead of focusing on a part of the system that works and does not cause delays, namely juries, the PECS/prison delivery system has been allowed to break and its pieces grind down the wheels of justice.
There needs to be better and transparent data collection, so all delays are properly recorded by PECS, prisons and the courts. We now are working with officials at a more granular level to look at specific barrister reports of late prisoners, triangulated against performance data.
The next iteration of the PECS contract must include input from the Bar who actually work in the courts. There should be transparency about the penalties imposed, the sums collected and how the proceeds are spent.
A tantalising efficiency is to take a small part of the wasted spend on the contracts, together with the penalties, and invest in legal aid, technology and crumbling courts. It might even provide some tepid comfort to the barrister who has just received the message from the disembodied voice in the cells that their client has not yet arrived.