Judges: High Court situation stabilised
The Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) has expressed its “unease” at a “long-term decline” in quality ratings for new district and circuit judges as it recommended a 6% pay rise across the bench.
In this year’s civil district judge recruitment round, only 49 of the 100 vacancies were filled and only 39% of selected candidates were graded strong or outstanding, the rest being either ‘selectable’ or ‘not presently selectable’.
The SSRB reviews and recommends salaries annually for judges, senior civil servants, senior officers of the Armed Forces, senior NHS managers, police and crime commissioners and chief police officers.
Last year, the government accepted the 7% increase it put forward for the judiciary.
This year’s report said the Judicial Appointments Commission’s gradings “have limitations”, but “were valuable as an indication of where the applicant pool may be weakening over time”.
This year’s quality rating of 39% for newly appointed civil district judges is, along with 2021-22, the lowest recorded figure so far. A majority of appointees were graded strong or outstanding until 2020-21, when the proportion fell from 57% to 42%.
Although all circuit judge vacancies were filled this year, the SSRB said there had been a “long-term decline in the proportion of those selected graded good or outstanding”, which fell to 59% in 2024, its second lowest recorded level.
There had been no shortfall in recruitment to the First-tier Tribunal “for some years” until the past 12 months, when 23 out of 70 vacancies went unfilled and only 28% of selected candidates were rated strong or outstanding.
“For every year in which we have data, this is the first time there has been a drop below 50%.”
The SSRB said the situation was even worse for employment judges, where only 25% of those selected were strong or outstanding.
“Significant problems with employment tribunal judge recruitment were noticeable last year and are evident again this year with a shortfall of 30 out of 50 vacancies.”
The SSRB said the first category of judges to show a recruitment shortfall in England and Wales were High Court judges.
“However, recruitment to these posts now seems to have stabilised. High Court judges are required to be graded either as outstanding or strong to be appointed, and the last two recruitment rounds have filled all vacancies.”
The SSRB also described the recruitment situation for the judiciary in Scotland and Northern Ireland as “largely satisfactory”.
On morale, the review body said the evidence it received highlighted “a large number of areas of dissatisfaction, in particular the condition of the court estate, insufficient administrative support, and heavy workloads”.
Although they welcomed last year’s pay award, many judicial associations were “frustrated with the long-term decline in real pay and called for this to be fully or partially reversed”.
The SSRB said the Ministry of Justice did not suggest a specific figure for the pay award in its evidence but said it should be the same for all judges.
In general, the SSRB said there were “significant and persistent problems in filling judicial vacancies”, the data this year had got worse and “while not every judicial role has problems, for the ones that do the numbers are striking”.
Pay was not the only factor affecting recruitment, but it was “a significant one”.
It recommended the same 6% pay award for all judicial posts, not because it believed the current salary differentials were “necessarily right”, but to make further recommendation on this would require “more specific and in-depth evidence than we receive during an annual review”.
This added to “the urgency of beginning the next major review of the judicial salary structure”, which was overdue but depended on the appointment of a new SSRB judicial member.
The recruitment campaign for the post was “unsuccessful in attracting sufficient candidates with the necessary knowledge of the judiciary” the first time around and had to be relaunched.
“The [latest] recruitment campaign was paused due to the general election, but we hope the Cabinet Office will proceed at pace once the new government is in place.”
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