Judges will get a 4% pay rise, the lord chancellor has announced – rejecting the 4.75% recommended by the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) to address recruitment shortfalls and poor morale.
Shabana Mahmood said in a ministerial statement that her decision ‘strikes a balance between addressing SSRB’s advice and managing the overall affordability to my department’.
The SSRB said there had been a ‘marked rise’ in judges’ workloads and security concerns, much of the courts estate was in poor condition and nearly half of judges were ‘extremely concerned’ about the deteriorating state of their court building.
Persistent issues filling judicial vacancies were a ‘matter of serious concern’, the SSRB added. A district judge campaign this year resulted in only 51 of 100 vacancies being filled.
The SSRB was also concerned about poor morale. ‘The rise in fears for personal security, inside and outside of court, is troubling. Evidence suggests that judges feel particularly concerned about media harassment, social media threats and physical violence, often exacerbated when individual judgments are questioned and the independence of the judiciary is challenged,’ the SSRB said.
While pay was not the only factor affecting recruitment, the SSRB said it was a ‘significant one’.
Mahmood said she shared the SSRB’s concerns but the judicial salary structure she has commissioned the SSRB to conduct ‘is the right place to address these areas through targeted reform, and presents better value than the flat rate pay uplift of the annual pay review’.
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