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Court Lists and Listings Access

Every court story starts with a list. This guide maps where the listings actually live in England and Wales — the Courts and Tribunals Hearings service, Courtserve, email from the courts, and the daily cause lists — what accredited journalists are entitled to under the HMCTS protocol, and how to turn it all into a daily routine.

Last reviewed: Next review due:

Jurisdiction note: This guide covers England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland run separate courts services with their own listing arrangements — see our Scottish courts overview and Northern Ireland courts overview.

Who publishes what: the listings map

There is no single place where every hearing in England and Wales is listed. Listings are split across an official HMCTS service, a long-established commercial distributor working with the Ministry of Justice, and — during a transition that has run for years — email from individual courts. Knowing which channel carries which court is the difference between a full diary and a missed case.

Courts and Tribunals Hearings service
HMCTS’s own listings site (court-tribunal-hearings.service.gov.uk). Publishes hearing lists for Crown Courts, magistrates’ courts (including Single Justice Procedure cases), civil and family courts, the Royal Courts of Justice and Rolls Building, and First-tier and Upper Tribunals (excluding employment tribunals) in England and Wales. Legal and media professionals can sign in for enhanced access.
Courtserve
Commercial list distribution run by Courtel Communications, which says it has worked with the Ministry of Justice for over 20 years and processes over 3,000 Crown and magistrates’ court lists a week. Free registration unlocks the magistrates’ listing service (run in conjunction with HMCTS, under licence); daily Crown Court, county court, employment tribunal and live RCJ/Rolls Building lists are also carried.
Email from individual courts
The HMCTS protocol says lists are provided primarily via the hearings service “and, during a transitional period, manually via email from individual courts”. Registers — the record of outcomes — are still provided manually by email. Getting on your local courts’ distribution lists remains essential.
Daily cause lists (High Court and appeals)
The Royal Courts of Justice and Business and Property Courts daily cause lists are published on the Courts and Tribunals Hearings service; the old standalone cause list pages have been retired and redirect there. Lists are subject to change until 4:30pm.

What accredited journalists are entitled to

Media access to criminal court lists and registers is governed by the HMCTS Protocol on sharing court lists, registers and documents with the media — agreed between HMCTS, the News Media Association and the Society of Editors, approved by the Lord Chancellor, and operating alongside Criminal Procedure Rule 5.8. First published in April 2020, it was most recently refreshed in June 2026. The headline entitlements:

  • Enhanced magistrates’ lists: Lists provided to accredited journalists contain each defendant’s name, date of birth (when provided), age, alleged offence and address — more information than the public versions carry. HMCTS guidance says recognised media who request lists should be issued proactively with full Crown and magistrates’ court lists routinely.
  • Crown Court lists and registers: Crown Court staff are encouraged to provide the equivalent information in response to media enquiries and to proactively distribute Crown Court registers to accredited media by email. Crown Court hearing lists also appear on the Courts and Tribunals Hearings service.
  • Registers — the outcomes: Court registers record what happened, and HMCTS undertakes to ensure they contain details of any reporting restrictions when they are first made. Magistrates’ media registers should include both Common Platform and Libra cases, and are provided manually by email from individual courts.
  • SJP parity and more: In Single Justice Procedure cases journalists are entitled to the same lists and registers as in other magistrates’ court cases — plus case documents (the prosecution statement of facts and defence mitigation) within one working day of an emailed request. See our SJP guide for the full picture.
  • Free of charge: HMCTS will not charge journalists for copies of court lists or court registers.
  • Accreditation, not HMCTS approval: HMCTS does not accredit journalists itself — it relies on verification of journalistic status by independently recognised media industry organisations, schemes and licences (a UK Press Card is the standard evidence), checked under its published guidance on checking the status of journalists.

The entitlements come with conditions. The protocol shares the data with you in confidence, for your own professional journalistic purposes only; it must not be passed to third parties other than another journalist (as the protocol defines one) or your legal advisers, and you remain responsible for complying with reporting restrictions. Treat the enhanced lists as source material, never as publishable content in themselves.

The Courts and Tribunals Hearings service

The hearings service at court-tribunal-hearings.service.gov.ukis HMCTS's own listings platform and the channel the protocol names as the primary route for court lists. It publishes hearing lists for Crown Courts and magistrates' courts in England and Wales — including Single Justice Procedure cases such as TV licensing and minor traffic offences — alongside civil and family courts, the Royal Courts of Justice and Rolls Building, and First-tier and Upper Tribunals (excluding employment tribunals).

Anyone can browse the public lists without an account. Legal and media professionals can sign in — and for journalists that sign-in matters, because the media versions of criminal lists carry the enhanced detail described above, and HMCTS requires identification (the press-card check in its guidance) plus acceptance of obligations about how long you retain the data.

Two behaviours of the service are worth internalising. First, if no list is published for a location, the service says that means no hearings are scheduled there. Second, HMCTS says more courts and tribunals will become available over time — coverage is deliberately incremental, which is why the email-from-courts transition and Courtserve both still matter.

Courtserve: the working reporter's aggregator

Courtserve (courtserve.net) is the service most working court reporters actually have open each evening. Run by Courtel Communications — which says it has been working with the Ministry of Justice for over 20 years and receives and processes over 3,000 lists from the Crown and magistrates' courts every week — it aggregates daily Crown Court lists, magistrates' court lists, county court (civil and family) lists, employment tribunal lists, and live Royal Courts of Justice and Rolls Building lists in one place.

Access is tiered. The public site is free; registering a free account unlocks the password-protected areas, including the magistrates' court listing service that Courtel launched in conjunction with HMCTS — those lists are Crown copyright, reproduced under licence from the Secretary of State for Justice, and expressly for personal viewing only. Courtel also sells premium products (CourtServe 2000 and the Crown Express, County Express and Employment Tribunal Express email services); it describes Crown Express subscribers as "officers of the Court and authorised media".

On timing, Courtserve's own guidance is the most concrete anywhere in the system: lists are published throughout the day, and if a court's list for the following day has not appeared by 5pm, it advises contacting the court directly. Both Courtel and HMCTS caveat that lists are subject to change at short notice at the discretion of the courts — a warning to take literally.

Common Platform and Libra: the systems behind the lists

You will hear court staff and lawyers talk about "Common Platform" constantly. It is the HMCTS criminal case management system: in HMCTS's words, it "allows the police, judiciary, solicitors, barristers and criminal justice agencies to access and edit case information". Defence professionals link to their cases, access case materials and serve documents through it. What it is not is a press portal — HMCTS describes no journalist login, and reporters cannot browse it.

The practical significance for reporters is upstream of the lists: magistrates' court cases now sit on either Common Platform or the older Libra system, and HMCTS guidance requires that media registers include cases from both. If a register you receive seems thin, it is worth asking the court whether both systems' cases are included. For case and hearing information you cannot get from a list or register, the route is human: the Courts and Tribunals Service Centre runs a centralised media enquiries line (0333 0419680, 8.30am to 5pm Monday to Friday, with Saturday cover for magistrates' court and single justice service enquiries).

Civil, High Court and appeals: the daily cause lists

For the senior courts, the working document is the daily cause list— the day's hearings for each division, published the working day before. These now live on the Courts and Tribunals Hearings service: for the Royal Courts of Justice it publishes daily cause lists including the King's Bench Division, King's Bench Masters, the Family Division, the Civil and Family lists, the Senior Courts Costs Office and the County Court at Central London; for the Business and Property Courts in the Rolls Building, lists include the Commercial Court, the Business List, the Insolvency and Companies Court, Intellectual Property, Interim Applications and the London Circuit Commercial Court.

The migration is complete enough that the old locations have been switched off: the former gov.uk Rolls Building cause list page now redirects permanently to the hearings service, and older judiciary.uk and gov.uk cause list pages are no longer the place to look. Bookmark the hearings service pages for the RCJ and Rolls Building instead.

Cause lists carry their own rhythm: they are subject to change until 4:30pm, and any alterations after that time are telephoned or emailed direct to the parties or their legal representatives — not broadcast publicly. If you are staking a day on a particular civil hearing, confirm with the parties' solicitors or the court the afternoon before. For what you can then do with a civil case, see our civil court reporting guide.

A working daily listings routine

The mechanics above compress into a routine most court reporters run in under half an hour a day. A workable pattern:

  • Late afternoon, the day before: sweep tomorrow’s lists. Check Courtserve (magistrates and Crown dailies land through the afternoon; chase the court if nothing by 5pm) and the Courts and Tribunals Hearings service, plus the RCJ and Rolls Building cause lists if you touch civil work.
  • Search names, not just courts. Work through the lists for defendants, companies, addresses and offences that match your patch, your running stories, and your newsroom’s watchlist. The enhanced media lists exist precisely so you can identify who is actually appearing.
  • Morning of: re-check before you travel. Lists change at short notice at the courts’ discretion — a case can move courtrooms, collapse, or be pulled overnight. Thirty seconds of re-checking beats a wasted morning.
  • Get on the email distributions. Registers still travel by email, and some lists do too during the transition. Ask each court you cover to add you to its media distribution, and keep your press card current — it is the key that unlocks every door in this system.
  • Close the loop with the register. The list tells you what was due to happen; the register tells you what did, including any reporting restrictions recorded when they were made. Request it, read it, and follow up the cases you previewed.
  • Log what you see. A private spreadsheet of listed cases, adjournments and outcomes turns scattered daily lists into a beat memory — invaluable when a name resurfaces months later. Keep it private: the protocol’s confidence conditions apply to retained data too.

What listings don't tell you

  • A list is not an outcome. A listed case may be adjourned, vacated or withdrawn before it is heard; conviction and sentence live in the register, not the list. Never write up a listing as if the hearing has happened.
  • The charge line is not the story. Lists give the alleged offence in a line — the evidence, context and mitigation emerge in the hearing itself or, in SJP cases, in the documents you can request. Budget reporting time accordingly.
  • Listed times are indicative. Courts run floating lists, cases are taken out of turn, and hearings overrun. Arriving for a “10am” case and finding it called at 3pm is normal; plan the day around the courthouse, not the timestamp.
  • Restrictions may exist that the list does not show. Reporting restrictions are recorded in the register when first made, and orders can be imposed at the hearing itself — check the register and ask the court clerk before naming anyone in a sensitive case.
  • Absence from one channel is not absence from the diary. Coverage of the hearings service is still growing and some lists travel only by email — cross-check a second source before concluding a court is idle.
  • Identity needs verifying. The enhanced lists give name, date of birth, age and address so you can distinguish a defendant from namesakes — use those fields for verification, and include enough detail in copy (age, street-level address) to avoid defaming the wrong person.

For what happens once you are in the building, see our magistrates court daily practice guide and Crown Court reporting guide; for the restrictions framework, our reporting restrictions overview.

Primary sources

Frequently asked questions

Where do I find what is listed in my local magistrates court tomorrow?
Two main routes. HMCTS provides court lists to accredited journalists primarily through its Courts and Tribunals Hearings service (court-tribunal-hearings.service.gov.uk), and during a transitional period manually by email from individual courts — so ask your local court what it can send you. Separately, Courtserve (courtserve.net), run by Courtel Communications, carries a magistrates' court listing service launched in conjunction with HMCTS; you need a free registered account to view those lists, which are reproduced under licence from the Secretary of State for Justice.
What extra detail do accredited journalists get on court lists?
Under the HMCTS Protocol on sharing court lists, registers and documents with the media, the versions of magistrates' court lists provided to accredited journalists contain each defendant's name, date of birth (when provided), age, alleged offence and address — more than the public versions. HMCTS media guidance says recognised media organisations and journalists who request lists and registers should be issued proactively with full Crown and magistrates' court lists routinely and without charge.
Do I have to pay for court lists and registers?
No. The HMCTS protocol commits HMCTS not to charge journalists for copies of court registers or court lists. Courtserve's public site and its registered areas are free to access, though it also sells premium services (CourtServe 2000 and its Crown Express, County Express and Employment Tribunal Express email services) aimed at professional court users.
What is Courtserve, and is it official?
Courtserve is a court list distribution service run by Courtel Communications, a private company which says it has worked with the Ministry of Justice for over 20 years and processes over 3,000 lists from the Crown and magistrates' courts every week. It carries daily Crown Court lists, magistrates' court lists (launched in conjunction with HMCTS, sign-in required), county court lists, employment tribunal lists and live Royal Courts of Justice and Rolls Building lists. It is not HMCTS itself, but its magistrates' lists are reproduced under licence from the Secretary of State for Justice — and its own terms say the lists are for personal viewing only, not for republication.
What is Common Platform — and can journalists log into it?
Common Platform is the HMCTS criminal case management system. According to HMCTS it allows the police, judiciary, solicitors, barristers and criminal justice agencies to access and edit case information; it offers no press login, and HMCTS guidance describes no direct media access to the system. Journalists encounter it indirectly: HMCTS guidance says magistrates' court media registers should include both Common Platform and Libra cases, so the lists and registers you receive are drawn from those systems. For case information, use the lists, the registers, and the Courts and Tribunals Service Centre media line (0333 0419680).
Where are the High Court daily cause lists published now?
On the Courts and Tribunals Hearings service. It publishes daily cause lists for the Royal Courts of Justice (including the King's Bench Division, Family Division, Senior Courts Costs Office and others) and for the Business and Property Courts in the Rolls Building (Commercial Court, Business List, Insolvency and Companies Court, Intellectual Property and more). The old standalone cause list pages have been retired — the former gov.uk Rolls Building cause list page now redirects straight to the hearings service. Lists there are subject to change until 4:30pm, after which alterations are notified directly to the parties.
Can I republish or share the lists I receive?
No. The protocol is explicit: the data is shared with you in confidence, should only be used for your own professional journalistic purposes, and must not be passed to third parties (other than another journalist as defined in the protocol, or your legal advisers). Courtserve's licence terms likewise prohibit copying, reproduction and distribution of its magistrates' lists. Report from the lists; do not dump them online. Misuse can end access for you and for colleagues.
There is no list published for the court I cover. Does that mean nothing is happening?
Not necessarily. On the Courts and Tribunals Hearings service, no published list for a location does mean no hearings are scheduled there — the service says so expressly. But coverage of the service is still growing (HMCTS says more courts and tribunals will become available over time), and some lists still travel by email during the transition, so an absent list can also mean the list simply is not published on that channel. If in doubt, check a second source — Courtserve, or the court itself — before concluding the diary is empty.

Related guides

Court ReportingMagistrates Court Daily PracticeRead →Court ReportingReporting the Single Justice ProcedureRead →Court ReportingCrown Court Reporting in DetailRead →Court ReportingCivil Court ReportingRead →BeatsCourt & Justice Reporting BeatRead →Court ReportingCourt Reporting HubRead →

Primary sources

Not legal advice. This guide is for educational purposes. Consult a qualified media lawyer before making publication decisions in legally sensitive situations.