How we work

CPS Direct is the national out of hours service that provides charging advice on behalf of the 42 Crown Prosecution Service Areas in England and Wales. We provide the police with access to 24/7 charging decisions from the CPS.

CPS Direct provides this service via a dedicated network of CPS prosecutors based throughout England and Wales. They are linked to the police by a high speed IT and telephony system.

Our prosecutors work each week day from 5pm until 9am. We operate continuously at weekends and Public Holidays. Each shift is overseen by an experienced legal manager.

To contact CPS Direct the Police ring a single national number. The call is then processed by a dedicated call routing system at CPS headquarters in London. The call will be routed to an available Prosecutor. Once connected, the Prosecutor and the police officer will work together to deliver the charging decision. This process is summarised below, it can also be viewed as a flowchart available as Adobe Acrobat PDF.

Charging Decisions

CPS Direct is available to make charging decisions only for persons in police custody at the time of the consultation. CPS Direct will deal with any case where the police are in possession of the evidence/material required by the Director of Public Prosecution's Guidance on Charging. It is a common misconception that CPS Direct can only advise on Threshold Test cases. The true position is that a decision will be given in all cases where the evidence is availabe, whether or not the suspect is regarded as suitable for bail in the event of a charge.

After some initial screening questions the prosecutor will look at the request for a charging decision (form MG3) and the evidence obtained and discuss the case with the officer. The prosecutor may then make a charging decision and set out an action plan for any further work that is needed to prepare the case for trial.

Alternatively the prosecutor may decide that the case is not ready for a charge. The prosecutor may feel that some key evidence is still required. In these circumstances an action plan will still be discussed and set out and a bail date for the suspect will be agreed.

A third possibility is that the prosecutor may decide there is insufficient evidence for a prosecution and that further work would be fruitless. Whatever the decision, the prosecutor will complete the MG3 and send it back to the police officer so that there is a written record of the decision and everyone is clear on what to do next.

A key reference document for CPS Direct prosecutors is the CPS Direct Good Practice Guide. This document is a practical guide for prosecutors delivering charging advice via the telephone. It also contains advice on applying the Director's Guidance on charging. The document is reviewed and revised by CPS Direct managers on a regular basis. You can view a copy of the CPS Direct Good Practice Guide as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.

Callbacks

CPS Direct works hard to ensure the number of available prosecutors is adequate to meet the expected demand for charging decisions. The Area support team constantly reviews call volume data to try and match hour-by-hour staffing levels to anticipated demand. However, it is not always possible to predict sudden surges in demand for charging advice and some officers will not always be connected to a CPS Direct prosecutor straight away.

If the prosecutor does not answer the call after 5 to 6 rings the system will present the call to the next prosecutor in line. If all prosecutors are engaged on calls, the system will present the call to the Central Telephony Operator Service (CTOPS), which currently answers all calls made to the CPS headquarters switchboard. The operators will take details of the call and flag it as a callback to the CPS Direct team on-shift.

CPS Direct Key Targets 2007-2008

The key targets for CPS Direct prosecutors as set out in the Area business plan are the timeliness of answering the calls and the quality of the decisions being made. CPS Direct aims to:

• answer 90% of calls within 35 seconds of the call being presented to a prosecutor
• deliver 90% of completed MG3s to the police within 15 minutes of the call ending
• meet or exceed the national target for discontinuance (cases abandoned before trial)

For more information download the CPS Direct Business Plan 2007-2008 PDF

View CPS Direct Frequently Asked Questions.