Crown Prosecution Service Annual Report and Resource Accounts 2008 - 2009

Director's letter to the Attorney General

I am pleased to report to you on the performance and continuing transformation of the Crown Prosecution Service during 2008-09.

Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC

The last 12 months have seen the Service become increasingly confident in its ability to play a role at the centre of the criminal justice system. I joined the Crown Prosecution Service in November 2008 because I believed in the journey that my predecessor Ken Macdonald had begun. The challenge for me is to complete this transformation successfully, and to establish the Crown Prosecution Service firmly as a modern public prosecution service that delivers justice for all.

The continued development of our Advocacy Strategy sees us now able not only to handle more cases in-house, but increasingly those of the most serious and complex nature. The appointment of our first Queen's Counsel this year showed that the quality of our advocacy has been recognised as being at the very highest level. The development of our Complex Casework Units and specialist casework divisions, has enabled us to attract some of the most gifted self-employed advocates to join us – further consolidating our position as an employer of choice for both newly-qualified and experienced lawyers.

The merger of the CPS with the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO) will see our specialist casework capabilities increase significantly over the next 12 months. We will look to bring together and embed the best of both organisations and establish improved and strengthened HQ casework divisions that will, for the first time, include our Fraud Prosecution Service.

The vast majority of people who come into contact with the CPS do so in the magistrates' courts, where our core business activity takes place. Through the embedding of the Optimum Business Model (OBM); the roll-out of a less bureaucratic approach to simple cases between ourselves and the police; and the continued work with the magistrates' courts to improve the flow of cases through the system, we have been able to improve our performance in this key arena further. During 2009-10, we will be looking at how the lessons learnt from OBM in the magistrates' courts can help us improve the way we work in the Crown Court.

Our responsibility for charging for all but the most minor offences continues to provide the public with improved justice. The number of cases that are discontinued has fallen by nearly a third since we assumed responsibility for charging, while the number of successful convictions has risen to more than 87%. During 2009-10, we will be working with our police colleagues to provide a charging service that fully utilises the developments in information technology and fits the changing nature of crime.

Crime has changed; the approach to combating criminal behaviour has changed; and society's expectations of its prosecution service have changed. All of this has seen the role of the CPS expand since its inception in 1986. In addition to our charging responsibilities, and increased role at court, we now have a role to play in the community that could not have been envisaged five years ago, let alone 20. Our work on community engagement has been a model of its kind, and during 2009-10 we will continue to seek ways in which we can better serve local communities.

Victims and witnesses are, and will continue to be, a key priority for me and the CPS. I welcomed the recent independent report looking at services to victims and witnesses. At the most senior level, the last year has seen us driving up performance in contacting victims and witnesses. The report recognised that our contact with this key group had "improved markedly", but I also acknowledge and support the report's call for even more to be done. I have commissioned work that will firmly establish a quality framework so that we can be confident that every contact that we have meets a standard that we expect and have described.

Next year will be about standards across the CPS; standards that focus our attention on the service that we provide to the public and less on the numbers that sit beneath it. We exercise powers on behalf of the public. We deliver a public service, and the public is entitled to expect its public prosecution service to undertake all its work in line with the highest possible standards.

Completing the transformation of the CPS and RCPO into a modern public prosecution service by adopting core quality standards requires confidence and it requires vision. I know that the staff of both organisations have the commitment and energy to make this happen, and with my senior management team I will ensure that they have the framework, skills and knowledge to do so.

Keir Starmer QC
Director of Public Prosecutions