The name given to listed sessions using courtrooms at the Royal Courts of Justice during the Easter and summer vacations to deal with accumulated small claims from county courts around London. Cases are heard by Deputy District Judges and overseen by a full time District Judge.

Other county courts may also sometimes hold “blitz days” or run “blitz lists” to dispose of a backlog of small claims: see The Resolution of Small Claims, interim report by the Civil Justice Council (April 2021). The expression has also been used in relation to “blitz trials” to reduce waiting times for criminal cases: see the Magistrates’ Criminal Courts 5-Point Plan (14 May 2021).

The expression has nothing to do with The Blitz as a term commonly used to describe the intense bombing of large cities and industrial centres in the United Kingdom during World War II, derived from the German word “Blitzkrieg” meaning “lightning war”. Rather, the word “blitz” has come to mean any determined process of dealing with a big task within a short time. However, use of the term to describe a court list has been criticised as insensitive to its wartime associations.

Claims actually dealing with The Blitz will tend to have been indexed under “War” or “Emergency legislation” and refer to statutes such as the War Damage Acts of 1941 and 1943, relating to compensation claims managed by the War Damage Commission (which was eventually dissolved under the War Damage Act 1964).

A more recent case referring to The Blitz concerns the fate of a large bronze sculpture by Henry Moore derived from his drawings made as a war artist at the time: see Tower Hamlets London Borough Council v Bromley London Borough Council [2015] EWHC 1954 (Ch); [2015] LGR 622; [2015] CN 1223, Ch D.