It is reported that in Manchester County Court, by the middle of May the backlog stood at 511 small claims trials, 200 fast track trials, 25 multi-track trials and 311 possession claims. Between mid-May and 28 August, a further 752 fast-track trials and 50 multi-track trials were listed, with a further 256 claims awaiting allocation to track.
We anticipate that the next quarterly statistics report will not make for easy reading. From October to December 2019 cases already took longer to get to trial: The mean time taken for small claims and multi/fast track claims to go to trial was 37.1 and 60.9 weeks, up 1.9 weeks and 2.1 weeks respectively compared to the same period in 2018.
Whilst the Court is trying to get on top of this backlog and list matters for hearings, why not try mediation? We run the Manchester Mediation Pilot.