Lord Phillips: unified court The number of actions commenced in the High Court last year continued to fall sharply, confirming a long-term trend that led to recent calls by senior judges to scrap the two-tier court structure (see [2004] Gazette, 1 July, 1).


The annual judicial statistics, issued by the Department for Constitutional Affairs, revealed that the number of claims and originating summonses issued in the Queen's Bench Division fell by 24% to 14,191 claims last year.


But despite the fact that the number of cases has decreased from more than 90,000 issued during 1999, the number of judges has risen: there were 66 in 1999 and there are 72 today.


The average waiting time from issue of claims to time of trial also increased last year, despite the dip in the number of cases, rising 10% to 164 weeks.


However there were rises in the numbers of claims brought in the Chancery division, where claims issued in London rose almost 16% to 4,533. There were modest increases in the number of claims brought in the Company Court (20,815) and the number of bankruptcy petitions lodged (10,850), which rose 2% and 7% respectively.


Last month the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, backed broad proposals for the High Court and county courts to be scrapped to make way for a unified civil court.



Lord Phillips told the Gazette that changes in the jurisdiction of the civil courts and a marked decrease in the number of actions before them meant that most cases could now be started in either court.