Courtsdesk, a data analysis company that supports media organisations and campaigners, has been instructed to delete its entire archive after the government issued a final refusal to allow the data to be retained. The archive has been widely used by journalists covering criminal courts across England and Wales.
The Courtsdesk project was approved in 2021 by the then lord chancellor as a pilot to assess how a national digital feed of court listings and registers could improve media coverage of magistrates’ courts. Its aim was to make court proceedings more transparent by providing journalists with timely and accurate access to case listings and outcomes.
Since its launch, Courtsdesk says its platform has been used by more than 1,500 journalists from 39 media organisations. Analysis of the data, it adds, exposed widespread failures in the courts system’s communication with the press.
According to the company, journalists received no advance notice for around 1.6 million criminal hearings. It also found that the number of court cases listed was accurate on only 4.2 per cent of sitting days, while more than half a million weekend hearings took place without any notification to the media.
The research further showed that two thirds of courts routinely heard cases without informing the press in advance. Seventeen courts that provided outcome data had not published a single advance listing throughout the entire period studied.
In November, HM Courts and Tribunal Service issued Courtsdesk with a cessation notice, ordering it to stop using the data. The agency cited what it described as “unauthorised sharing” of court information, linked to a test feature, and said the matter raised data protection concerns.
Courtsdesk says it wrote to the Ministry of Justice requesting that the issue be referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which oversees data protection matters, but claims no referral was made.
Chris Philp, the former justice minister who approved the original pilot and is now shadow home secretary, wrote to the courts minister, Sarah Sackman, calling for the decision to be overturned.
Despite this intervention, the government issued a final refusal last week, meaning the archive must now be deleted within days.
Enda Leahy, the chief executive of Courtsdesk and a former legal affairs correspondent at The Sunday Times, said the decision undermined open justice.
“We built the only system that could tell journalists what was actually happening in the criminal courts,” he said. “HMCTS’s own data shows they cannot do this themselves. Their records were accurate just 4.2 per cent of the time, and 1.6 million cases were heard with no advance notice to the press.”
Leahy said the company had repeatedly sought dialogue with officials. “We wrote 16 times asking for engagement. Instead, we have been told to delete everything. If the government was genuinely committed to open justice, it would talk to us.”
An HMCTS spokesperson said the press had always had, and would continue to have, full access to court information to enable accurate reporting. The spokesperson added that the department would always take appropriate action to ensure the proper handling of personal data.
When asked to specify the data protection concerns that led to the deletion order, the department declined to comment.
