Barry Hughes introduces CPS South West

In a short video, Barry Hughes, Chief Crown Prosecutor for CPS South West, gives some background and explains the work of the Area.

This video is also available in QuickTime format: Barry Hughes CCP video (.mov, approx 10mb) (Opens in new window)

Text transcript of the video

Hello, I'm Barry Hughes and I'm the Chief Crown Prosecutor for the South West of England. I'm responsible ultimately for the prosecutions that arise from the three police constabularies of Avon and Somerset, Devon and Cornwall and Gloucestershire. Together with my staff, of which there are about 350, we prosecute over 60,000 cases in the courts every year and about 7,500 of those are very serious cases from the Crown Courts with the remainder coming from Magistrates' Courts across the South West of England.

A little bit about my background; before coming to this part of the world, I was Chief Crown Prosecutor in Cheshire and before that I was Assistant Chief in London. I have about 25 years' experience of prosecuting and I bring a great deal of experience to my role. Many of my staff have worked for this organisation for the same amount of time and they have a huge pool of collective experience which we bring to bear when prosecuting criminals as efficiently and effectively as possible on behalf of the people of the South West of England.

I hope youre watching this video because you're interested in the work of the Crown Prosecution Service and how we fit together with the police and the courts to provide a criminal justice system. There are plenty of links on this website which will tell you much more about the service that we've formed and how we fit in to the greater whole. So I would urge you to have a good look around, click on those links, find out much more about what we do. There's also a complaints and feedback button. If you press on that you'll be able to tell us directly what you think of us and to ask us questions. So please, have a look around and thank you for watching.