Hold the Front Page: Labour u-turns on court archive deletion. “A move to permanently delete five years of court records from a widely-used journalism resource has been halted after a government u-turn. As previously reported on HTFP, HM Courts and Tribunal service had ordered the deletion of the Courtsdesk archive, an online tool which helped reporters search through magistrates’ court lists […]

#UK #legal #transparency #Courtsdesk

'The move sparked protests from journalists amid fears of important public interest cases going unreported.

Now the Ministry of Justice, headed by Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, has paused the deletion order.'

https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2026/news/labour-u-turns-on-court-archive-deletion/

Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK’s largest court reporting database

#Courtsdesk #openJustice #stepbystep #journalism

https://www.legalcheek.com/2026/02/ministry-of-justice-orders-deletion-of-the-uks-largest-court-reporting-database/

Legal Cheek: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK’s largest court reporting database. “Courtsdesk will reportedly be deleted within days after HM Courts & Tribunals Service ordered every record wiped. The platform had been used by more than 1,500 reporters from 39 media outlets to search magistrates’ court lists and registers, but the move has triggered warnings that important […]

Nothing says open justice like delete the evidence trail. The UK Ministry of Justice has ordered Courtsdesk’s court reporting archive—used by 1,500+ journalists across 39 orgs—deleted within days, after the project was approved in 2021. Very tidy. 😼

https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/11/1656216/uk-orders-deletion-of-countrys-largest-court-reporting-archive

#Courtsdesk #UK #Journalism

MoJ orders deletion of UK’s largest court reporting archive

Interesting to compare this to government dismay when Meta shut down CrowdTangle; apparently government hates being held to account by third parties:

Enda Leahy, the Courtsdesk chief executive […said]: “We built the only system that could tell journalists what was actually happening in the criminal courts. “HMCTS’s own data proves they can’t do it — their records were accurate 4.2 per cent of the time, 1.6 million cases were heard without any advance notice to the press.

… An HMCTS spokesman said that the press always had and would retain full access to information from the courts to ensure accurate reporting.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/moj-orders-deletion-of-uks-largest-court-reporting-archive-27f5zcbb7