Cases at Ipswich Crown Court from Suffolk and north Essex are facing delays as criminal barristers in England Wales go on a continuous strike from today.

Members of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), who have been walking out on alternate weeks, have voted in favour of an indefinite, uninterrupted strike as their row with the Government over pay intensifies.

The all-out strike in effect begins when industrial action resumed yesterday, August 30, although the official start date is September 5, since the walkouts continue in the meantime.

Ministry of Justice figures show more than 6,000 court hearings have been disrupted by the dispute over levels of legal aid funding.

Barristers are due to receive a 15 per cent fee rise from the end of September but there is anger that the rise will not be immediate and doesn’t apply to backlog cases.

Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has accused barristers of “holding justice to ransom”, saying: “ My message to the CBA is simple. We are increasing your pay. Now your actions are only harming victims, increasing the court backlog.”

On Tuesday (August 30) a trial at Ipswich Crown Court was unable to take place because the defence barrister in the case was taking part in the strike action and several plea and trial preparation hearings also had to be adjourned.

Some defendants at Ipswich Crown Court are already having to wait more than a year for a trial date because of a build-up of cases caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and the strike action is likely to add to the already substantial backlog in the crown courts - which stood at nearly 60,000 in figures published recently.

The CBA claims the criminal justice system is chronically underfunded and “creaking at the seams” after a decade of cuts and that this underfunding has led to an "alarming exodus" of criminal barristers, with the system teetering on the brink of collapse.

It claims the number of specialist criminal barristers has shrunk by a quarter in the last five years and the crisis is set to get worse, with a Bar Council survey in October 2021 finding that 25% of criminal barristers intended to leave.