The order to delete Courtsdesk’s archive is not an administrative tidying-up exercise.
It is a decision that makes the criminal courts less visible, less accountable, and harder to scrutinise – and it should worry anyone who cares about open justice.
For those of us who report from court regularly, Courtsdesk became part of the daily machinery of doing the job properly.
I’ve been covering cases at the Crown Courts in Preston and Burnley since early 2023.
Courtsdesk was never a replacement for court lists, phone calls, or sitting through hearings. It was a way of making sense of a system that increasingly withholds detail until the last possible moment.
Court lists are published, but anyone familiar with them knows how limited they often are. Crown Court listings routinely amount to little more than a name and a hearing type. Magistrates’ lists are better, but still incomplete.
Courtsdesk filled those gaps. It allowed reporters to prepare, to prioritise, and to ensure that hearings of genuine public interest were not missed simply because the information wasn’t there in time.
That matters because “open justice” does not mean very much if cases can be heard without meaningful notice to the press.
Courts may be open in theory, but in practice, the public relies on journalists to be present. If reporters do not know what is happening or cannot reasonably prepare for it, scrutiny falls away.
The data Courtsdesk gathered was uncomfortable reading for the justice system. Millions of hearings without advance notice. Listings that were accurate on only a tiny fraction of sitting days. Courts routinely hear cases the media had no way of knowing about. That information did not damage open justice; it demonstrated where it was already failing.
The data Courtsdesk gathered was uncomfortable reading for the justice system. Millions of hearings without advance notice. Listings that were accurate on only a tiny fraction of sitting days. Courts routinely hear cases the media had no way of knowing about. That information did not damage open justice; it demonstrated where it was already failing.
The response to that exposure has been to shut the project down and order the archive deleted, citing data protection concerns that have not been publicly explained in any meaningful detail.
“Delete everything” is a remarkable conclusion to reach, particularly for a project that was approved by ministers and used by journalists across the country.
The Ministry of Justice insists the press will continue to have full access to court information. But access that is fragmented, incomplete, and impractical is not real access.
Expecting journalists to spend hours each evening ringing listings offices is not a serious answer – for reporters or for already overstretched court staff.
The effect of this decision will not be abstract. It will mean fewer cases reported, fewer patterns identified, and less consistent reporting of the criminal courts. Serious offenders will slip through the cracks, and cases of genuine public interest will be missed.
Local and regional reporters, the ones who are in court day-in, day-out, keeping their communities properly informed, and have fewer resources to work around broken systems, will feel it most.
Courtsdesk was not perfect. But it worked, and more importantly, it showed how far the courts still have to go to meet their own claims about transparency.
If open justice only exists when it is convenient for the system, then it does not exist at all.
