The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has published quarterly civil justice statistics for Q2 2024.

Of particular note to many of LPC Law's stakeholders, there was an increase of 13% in the number of mortgage and landlord possession claims, to 30,000. An increase of 2% in return of goods claims was also seen in Q2 2024 compared with Q2 2023.

The data reveals that so far, only 135 claims have been allocated to the Intermediate Track.

5% fewer cases were allocated to the Multi-Track year-on-year, whilst there were increases of 20% for Fast Track and 28% for Small Claims Track allocations compared with Q2 2023.

There were 12,000 trials during the quarter, which is an 11% decline compared with the same quarter last year. There was a small increase (4%) in the number of defended claims.

As to legal representation, most damages claims had legal representatives for both claimant and defendant, whereas for mortgage and landlord claims, in 40% of such cases, neither side was represented; it is assumed that a number of private landlords represent themselves, whereas anecdotally mortgage lenders almost invariably have legal representatives.

How long does it take for a claim to reach a hearing? A Small Claim takes on average 50.6 weeks from it being issued to it reaching a Court hearing. Longer waiting times are experienced in London and the South-East. On average, a Multi-Track or Fast Track claim took 79.3 weeks to reach a trial (a rise of 1.2 weeks year-on-year). This remains higher than the average waiting duration from 2009 to 2019 (which ranged between 52 and 61 weeks).

The MOJ's report states: "Covid-19 and associated actions have led to an uptick in time taken for all claims to reach trial. Prior to this, a sustained period of increasing receipts [i.e. claims being issued] had increased the time taken to hear civil cases and caused delays to case progression."