ABSTRACT
The work of the Court Standards Working Party, largely undertaken away from the public gaze, reveals the difficulty of furthering a policy constructed in the abstract world of Westminster and Whitehall. The usual challenge of gathering data from the regions about the workflow of courts was exacerbated by the fact that relevant statistics had not been kept centrally prior to the Courts Act 1971. Political pressure on the Court Standards Working Party to produce more and more courtrooms was exacerbated by the fact that the failings of the court estate in the early 1970s had a serious knock-on effect on overcrowding in prisons. The lack of confidence within the Lord Chancellor’s Department in the early years was to have a long-lasting impact on how the Court Standards Working Party went about its work and the type of concerns and methods that were adopted.
