About Us

What do we do?

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is responsible for the review and prosecution of most criminal cases in England and Wales. This means that we prosecute people in the courts who have been investigated by the police and charged with a criminal offence.

In most cases the CPS now decides whether a person will be charged with a criminal offence, and what this charge should be. Crown Prosecutors look at all the information about a case which has been given to them by the police. They then decide whether there is enough evidence against the defendant and whether it is in the public interest to bring that person to court.

Did you know?

• West Yorkshire is one of 42 CPS Areas and employs over 330 legal and administrative staff, which makes it the fourth largest in England and Wales.
• West Yorkshire has a population of over 2.1 million people including the major cities of Leeds and Bradford and the number of cases we deal with each year reflects this. In 2007-2008 we dealt with 46,310 cases in the Magistrates' Courts and a further 5,292 cases in the Crown Court.
• The Area is divided into two large Units known as the Eastern Area (covering Leeds, Wakefield and Pontefract) and the Western Area (covering Bradford, Keighley, Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Halifax). Each Area is led by an Area Crown Prosecutor.
• A new dedicated Complex Casework Unit (CCU), based at Oxford House in Leeds, now deals with all the Area's most serious casework.
• The Western and Eastern Units are divided into teams which reflect the County's police divisions. Five of these teams are based within police stations at Halifax, Huddersfield, Wakefield, Bradford North (Toller Lane) and Bradford South (Trafalgar House).
• These teams prosecute cases in Magistrates' Courts at Leeds, Bradford, Bingley, Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Wakefield and Pontefract and the two Crown Court centres at Leeds and Bradford.
• In 2007-2008 we achieved an average conviction rate of 86% in the Magistrates' Courts and 83% in the Crown Courts.
• The Chief Crown Prosecutor (CCP) and Area Business Manager (ABM), are based at Oxford House, Oxford Row in Leeds.