Courtsdesk and Data Protection
05/03/2026
Court reporters have been up in arms in the last month or so over the government’s decision to shut down Courtsdesk, a handy system for finding cases coming before courts in England & Wales.
Although the backlash to this decision appears to have forced a government U-turn – for now at least – it has shone a spotlight on the data protection issues faced by organisations which retain court lists.
Doubtless, some media organisations which routinely monitor courts have built up and retained their own stockpiles of courts lists, so a brief look at these issues seems timely.
Court lists include vast amounts of information about defendants, victims and other witnesses, including their names, dates of birth and addresses. Victims of sexual offences and children are named in the lists, which often contain explicit details about abuse they might have suffered.
Other snippets of highly sensitive information such as mobile phone numbers and email addresses of defendants have been known to feature.
Clearly, such court lists should not be allowed to end up in the wrong hands, but the Ministry of Justice trusts accredited journalists to use them responsibly as a tool to find cases they want to cover.
But a sticky question is: how long should a journalist or media organisation be permitted to retain a court list for? The answer, according to His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, is six months.
Under the HMCTS ‘protocol on sharing court lists, registers and documents with the media’, media organisations are asked to destroy the electronic data supplied, and any printed copies of lists and registers within six months or other appropriate longer period, if recommended by their legal advisers or insurers (although details of individual cases for journalistic purposes can be retained).
This protocol, last updated November 10 last year, is merely guidance and does not have the status of law. But it does raise the prospect of the MoJ taking action against a media organisation which retains court lists beyond the six-month period.
If a victim, witness or defendant were to sue a media organisation for retaining a court list containing their personal data beyond the six month period, the existence of such guidance may also be taken into account.
Six months will seem like an inadequate period to most journalists. For one thing, with the backlog, most court cases take years to conclude. The way court lists are formatted mean it would require technical wizardry to segregate concluded cases and retain only ongoing cases.
Moreover, journalists can receive complaints on articles they write about court cases any time after six months – up to a year in libel and up to six years for other causes of action. Court records are essential for defending against complaints, where journalists will need to demonstrate the basis of the information they have reported.
Media organisations who defy the HMCTS protocol would likely rely on the journalism exemption in the GDPR for retaining court lists over six months if they ever faced an action. The question of how a court would rule on the journalism exemption remains a moot point; it’s a tricky issue which has taxed journalists and lawyers alike for years.
But the uncertainty and the fiasco over Courtsdesk may have left many publishers reviewing their retention policies. These days, data protection is all the rage, and it’s something publishers ignore at their peril.