Judges have launched a bid to bring “very old” rape cases to trial within the next five months, a senior judge has said.

Lord Justice Edis, the senior presiding judge for England and Wales, has announced a bid to target 181 of the oldest rape cases and bring them before a jury by the end of July.

These cases, which involve both adult and child alleged victims as well as some retrials, have each been at a crown court since 2021.

Lord Justice Edis told reporters: “This is an unacceptable state of affairs from the point of view of the complainants, the witnesses, the defendants, and justice generally.

“The system suffered some shocks over the last four years because of the pandemic, we didn’t used to have this problem, and the current situation is the product of those shocks.”

The Court of Appeal judge, who oversees leading crown court judges, said the average time for a case to come to trial was about a year for non-custody cases.

The total number of rape cases awaiting trial is 3,355 as of January, Lord Justice Edis said, with about 6% of these cases classed as “very old”.

He continued: “It’s a small proportion of the total number of rape cases that we have to deal with that end up getting this old but nevertheless, it’s a significant injustice because the system has recovered its capacity.

“We are now in a position to make some choices, we are not in a hand-to-mouth crisis now.”

The 181 targeted cases are spread across England and Wales, with most crown courts facing around three or four each.

Lord Justice Edis said judges would work with barristers and bodies including the Crown Prosecution Service and HM Courts and Tribunals Service to ensure most of the trials began by the end of July.

The plans come in the wake of a Criminal Bar Association survey which showed that more than 60% of barristers approved to conduct rape and serious sexual offences cases said they would not reapply to the specialist list to carry out those cases.

Asked about the survey’s findings, Lord Justice Edis said: “Our system requires a substantial supply of skilled and experienced advocates in all our offence categories, but nowhere more than in rape and other serious sexual offences.

“If that supply is threatened, for whatever reason, our capacity to deal with the work is inhibited and that is a significant limiting factor.

“We hope that there will be work done, investment made in the long-term, in order to sustain that necessary supply of skilled people working in the system.

“They are a very valuable asset and it’s disappointing to read that survey, but I hope that that survey can be the start of efforts to put the situation right, because we can’t run the system without advocates.”

Lord Justice Edis described the move to target the oldest rape cases as “step one”.

He continued: “Once we get rid of these very old ones which are coming up to their third birthday, we will be taking action with the rest of those cases to get them done.

“And the aim is to get rid, by trial, of cases before they get as old as this cohort of cases have got.”

Shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood welcomed the “significant intervention” by the judiciary.

The Labour MP said: “The reality is that they have had to step in to fix the Conservatives’ mess.

“It’s ultimately the responsibility of government to ensure a functional criminal justice system, and their abysmal failure has led to a record backlog of cases.

“It should not fall to judges to ensure that rape victims do not wait for years to have their cases heard.

“While the Government continues to outdo its own failures, it is victims of crime who are suffering because of this inept leadership.”