Courts in crisis: The struggle for justice in one English town

Now 24, he says he has been to court 16 or 17 times over the years. He had a mental breakdown because of the strain, he says, but is now a fully qualified truck mechanic and workshop foreman. If convicted, the three accused could still face seven-year prison sentences.

Lewis Harborn points out, however, that if the original 2019 trial had gone ahead, and even if he had been found guilty and imprisoned, then he would most likely have been out in 2022 or 2023 and would have been able to put it behind him.

He says that people are not sympathetic when he expresses his frustration about the delays. “If you try and talk about this sort of situation, people tend to just judge you straight away, think you’re a bit of a wrong ‘un,” he says, adding that it often seems pointless to make any plans for the future.

In brief comments to the BBC, the alleged victim of this incident said he felt he had been “pushed aside to just deal with it on my own with no support or anything. I just feel like the system is failing”.

Polling suggests that most people think public services have deteriorated nationally in recent years. This article is the second of three focusing on the town of Telford, which a BBC News analysis has identified as facing particular challenges across its courts, schools and health services. Similar problems to those found in Telford are widespread, however.

The delays in the courts system are one of a number of problems in the criminal justice system. Prisons are full, so some inmates are being released early while trials are being deliberately delayed to ease the pressure on jails.

To cope with the backlog at Shrewsbury Crown Court, the Ministry of Justice has created an additional courtroom at Telford Magistrates’ Court. Cases listed for Court 4 at Shrewsbury Crown Court are now physically heard 14 miles away in Court 1 at Telford.