Women’s Aid responds to the Criminal Crown Courts funding announcement

Ellie Daniel, Head of Policy and Survivor Services, comments:   

Today’s announcement that all Criminal Crown Courts in England and Wales will be funded to hear as many cases as possible next year is welcome. It is vital that survivors of domestic abuse feel confident that a backlog of cases does not stand in the way of access to justice, and increased investment will help enable this. 

While welcome, investment to ease the backlog in cases will not fix the entrenched problems survivors of domestic abuse face in securing the justice they deserve.  We continue to call for mandatory, specialist domestic abuse training for all court professionals to enable them to understand the complexity of domestic abuse. This is urgently needed and must be accompanied by wider culture change to address the misogynistic attitudes that dominate in the criminal justice system, so that survivors get the justice that they deserve.