UK Government Says More Than 3,800 New Magistrates Recruited as It Aims for a 21,000-Strong Magistracy in 2028/29

The UK government said on 23 October that more than 3,800 new magistrates have been recruited under its watch, as it works towards a 21,000-strong magistracy in 2028/29. The announcement came in a press release issued by the Ministry of Justice and HM Courts & Tribunals Service, and it quotes the Minister for Courts and Legal Services, Sarah Sackman KC MP. The figures are the government’s own, as published on GOV.UK.

What the Government Reports

According to the release, almost 1,500 magistrates, which it calls “local justice champions”, were appointed in the first six months of 2026, almost double the number recruited in the same period the previous year. It says women made up 55 per cent of new appointments, according to recent statistics. A £4 million recruitment campaign is running across national television and social media.

Ms Sackman says “a record number” of people have answered the call to serve their communities, and that magistrates are “at the heart of local justice”. The release says the additional magistrates will add capacity in magistrates’ courts and speed up case hearings, and Ms Sackman says they will help keep cases moving and ease pressure on the courts.

Wider Court Changes

The release sets the recruitment drive alongside other court measures. The release says this work, including the audio-recording pilot and the planned permission stage for appeals, forms part of the government’s response to Lord Leveson’s review of the criminal courts, which it describes as setting out a blueprint for modernising the criminal courts and tackling the inherited Crown Court backlog. It sets out several related steps:

• New audio-recording technology is being tested in seven courtrooms across the country to create a reliable record of proceedings in magistrates’ courts. The government says this is intended to modernise the appeals process and free up court time.
• The government plans to replace the automatic right of appeal with a permission stage, so that courts can decide whether a case proceeds.
• The Courts and Tribunals Bill entered the House of Lords on 14 October. The government says it amended the bill to drop proposals that would have limited jury trials, so almost all Crown Court cases will still be heard by a jury.

The release does not include responses from opposition parties, legal bodies or magistrates’ representatives, and this article has not sought to test the government’s figures independently.

Why It Matters

The government says the new recruits will boost capacity and help keep cases moving, which links the size of the bench to its court-capacity aims. The announced figures show its stated direction on recruitment and on the gender mix of new appointments, but the release does not say how much the backlog has changed as a result. The appeals plan and the bill, which is now before the Lords, will be the points to watch, because they would alter how cases move through the system.