Public Consultations

We want to hear your views about our prosecution policy. You can help us to be better informed, fairer and more representative by participating in our consultations. For more information about the outcomes of previous consultations and to find out if there are any ongoing consultations see the Consultations section on our national website.

Visit the Consultations section of the Crown Prosecution Service website

Comments and Feedback

We welcome any comments and feedback about the service we provide.  Whether you have had a good experience or a bad experience we would like to hear from you.  The Feedback and Complaints section tells you how to send us your comments.

Visit the Feedback and Complaints section of the Crown Prosecution Service Website

Home » Get Involved

Get Involved

We welcome feedback about the service we provide.  It is an important part of helping us to continue to improve what we do and how we do it.  We have Local Scrutiny and Involvement Panels in each of the three counties in the North West Area.  They are made up of community representatives who look at our work and policies and give us their views and ideas on how we can do things better.  The panel meetings also give us an opportunity to explain the work that we do to representatives of our local communities..

Local Scrutiny Involvement Panels

Our Local Scrutiny Involvement Panels (LSIPs) have an important role in helping us to improve how we prosecute cases and the services we provide to victims and witnesses.  They are made up of volunteers who act as our 'critical friends'.  We ask the panels what we're doing well, what we can do better and ask for their comments and ideas of how we can improve our work.  We consult them about how we can increase confidence within our local communities.   It is a two-way process. The panel members tell us about any areas of concern that local people have about crime and criminal justice and we explain about specific aspects of the work that we do. The aim is for local communities to have more of an understanding of what we do and more of a say in what we do.

Hate Crime Scrutiny

The Local Scrutiny Involvement Panels also help us to improve how we respond to Hate Crimes.  Hate crimes includes offences that are motivated by hostility against victims because of their race, religion, sexuality or disability.  Hate crime is particularly hurtful to victims because it is targeted towards them because of their personal identity.  The CPS takes hate crime particularly seriously and we are committed to prosecuting these offences as effectively and fairly as possible.

At LSIP meetings the panel members look closely at randomly selected hate crime cases. They include cases involving racist and religiously motivated crime, homophobic crime, disability hate crime, domestic violence and rape.  They look at the decisions that have been taken during the life of a case, how CPS policies have been applied and the care that has been given to victims and witnesses.  The panel members make recommendations which are fed back to prosecutors and other staff to improve their understanding of how hate crime affects individual victims and communities.  Members of the panel also feed back to their communities the action that the CPS area has taken in response to the issues they raise.  

The scrutiny panels aim to contribute to continuous improvement in how the CPS handles hate crime cases and an improvement in working relationships between the CPS and community partners.  Each of the panels meets three or four times a year. The Local Scrutiny Involvement Panels are an important step in our drive to consult more with local communities about our work and to build greater confidence in the Criminal Justice System.

How to get involved

To find out more about the work of the Local Scrutiny Involvement Panels or if you are interested in applying to be a member of one of the panels, please contact the North West  Equality, Diversity and Community Engagement Manager Stacey Davis.