https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2026
24 September 2026
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2026
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2026-09-11.29097.h
Ministry of Justice written question – answered at on 22 September 2026.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much his Department spent on interpreters and related translation services in 2025.
The total spend by the Ministry of Justice on interpreters and related translation services during the 2025 calendar year was £41,945,961.34.
This figure includes expenditure on contracted spoken language interpreting (£30,127,536.45), non-spoken language interpreting (£1,849,519.44), translation and transcription (£2,988,335.45), and quality assurance services across the Ministry of Justice estate, including commissioning bodies (£524,692.00). It also includes off-contract language services expenditure incurred by HM Courts and Tribunals Service (£6,455,878.00). During the 2025 calendar year, more than 150,000 interpreter service requests were fulfilled across the Ministry of Justice estate.
18th September 2026
Reza appeared before Preston Magistrates last Thursday (September 10), but the CPS was unable to find an interpreter and it was determined that the case was not worth pursuing.
The charge was withdrawn and Reza was released from custody. Lancashire Police issued him with a community protection notice and the force said the 38-year-old has since moved out of the area.
A CPS Spokesperson said: “We recognise the concern caused by the behaviour reported outside a school.
“The defendant was charged with an offence that could only result in a fine or a discharge, and as he had already spent two days in police custody and he had no financial means, any fine was likely to have been offset by the time he had already spent in custody.
“Despite best efforts to secure an interpreter when the case was ready to be heard, none were available. In those circumstances, after careful consideration, we determined that the case could not continue.”
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2026-09-02.26776.h
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS-funded interpreter bookings resulted in patient non-attendance in each of the last three years; and what steps her Department is taking to reduce costs arising from patient non-attendance where an interpreter has been booked.
The requested information is not centrally held by the Department.
11 August 2026
[…] However, his case at Lincoln Magistrates Court was adjourned until September as an interpreter was not available for the hearing.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41886148.html
27 July 2026
The Courts Service is considering implementing an AI translation service to save money and speed up hearings.
The service spends approximately €4m on translation and interpretation services annually.
The AI alternative is at a “proof-of-concept” stage, and the Courts Service says further “development and evaluation is required”.
Testing is underway “to measure accuracy”.
A digital audio recording AI assistant project has already passed initial testing and will be rolled out in a controlled deployment during September and October, “subject to readiness”.
At an Oireachtas committee on artificial intelligence, Courts Service chief information officer Owen Harrison previously said: “It is hoped that we will be able to give members of the judiciary and the courts options for moving cases along in respect of small procedural matters that need a translation capability in the room that is not immediately available and could otherwise lead to adjournments in order to bring back a person to get over that hurdle.
“A number of judges want to see whether we can do anything in this space.”
Courts Service CEO Angela Denning said Spain uses such technology “very effectively”. Singapore and Slovenia have speech-to-text technology available, she added.
Ms Denning said: “That type of thing would be of great assistance to court users and could save the system money through obviating the need to have
interpreters available for every small matter, for the procedural matters.
“For trials, we will still have our interpreters available, and indeed interpreters for the legal teams.”
17 July 2026
[…] In one incident at Felixstowe highlighted in the report, a woman and her 18-month-old child were detained for over 22 hours in an inadequate facility and staff used Google Translate to communicate with her instead of professional telephone interpretation. "This included to serve documentation, conduct interviews, refuse entry and attempt removal, giving little assurance that the woman understood the process or her legal rights," HMI Prisons said. [...]
Read more here: https://cdn.websitebuilder.service.justice.gov.uk/uploads/sites/19/2026/07/Border-Force-STHFs-web-2026-1.pdf
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2026-07-16a.1094.1
Part
of the debate – in the House of Commons at 11:16 am on 16 July
2026.
Thanks
to the outsourcing of interpreter and translation services to private
providers, qualified interpreters and translators are being exploited
through lower pay and are often substituted by those providing
substandard services. We have already seen the West Midlands police
rely on Cintra for such services—to the detriment of the force,
interpreters and my constituents—and NHS Birmingham and Solihull is
now on the verge of doing the same through Word360. Will the Leader
of the House consider setting some time aside to discuss these
predatory practices?
These are concerning matters, and the hon. Gentleman is right to raise them. I suggest that he seek either a Westminster Hall debate or an Adjournment Debate when we return, so that he can go into further detail on an issue that I am sure is causing distress to some of his constituents.
6 July 2026
The Lady Chief Justice has issued new guidance on use of live video links in criminal courts that will be implemented by 1 October 2026.
[…] "Where a defendant requires an interpreter, in-person attendance will ordinarily be preferable (particularly if more than one defendant requires an interpreter and there are different languages), unless it is not possible to secure an in-person interpreter within the time required, or (for hearings other than a trial) the hearing can proceed more expeditiously by the defendant and the interpreter both attending by live link (allowing the interpreter to interpret for the defendant without being heard by the court)." [...]
Read more here: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/LCJ-Guidance-on-Live-Links-in-Criminal-Courts.pdf
2 July 2026
A new report by the Public Law Project (PLP) details how cultural, linguistic and procedural barriers continue to undermine access to justice in the UK's immigration and asylum tribunals.
You can download the 33-page report here.
PLP explained: "[The] report examines how the accessibility and accuracy of interpretation and translation, the quality of evidence on country context and the ability to understand it, and procedural constraints affect access to justice in immigration and asylum tribunals. The report's central argument is that cultural and linguistic understanding lies at the heart of asylum and immigration tribunals, thereby making cultural competence a procedural fairness matter."
Read more here: https://www.ein.org.uk/news/new-report-examines-how-linguistic-and-cultural-errors-undermine-justice-immigration-tribunals
