Our operating environment and challenges
The CPS business plan sets out our transformation priorities for the year ahead, but in doing so it must also be responsive to the environment in which we work. Our operating context is both challenging and evolving – in the year ahead, we will need to balance a desire to deliver important changes with pragmatism and flexibility to succeed.
The pandemic changed the CPS immeasurably, and we continue to feel its impact in a post-pandemic era. We still face a significant backlog of cases, in numbers higher than we expected, due to various overlapping pressures that have impacted recovery this year, particularly industrial action and subsequent challenges regarding bar fees. We also recognise that this has been a challenging year across government, with economic pressures affecting funding priorities. To respond to these challenges and deliver on our CPS 2025 commitments, our operational delivery plans need to address the remaining backlog whilst continuing to improve our ways of working.
The digitisation of information and processes continues to transform the criminal justice system, presenting major challenges and equally significant opportunities. The CPS continues to lead the way in its rapid adoption of digital working, giving us a solid foundation to build on. We are capitalising on this by investing in digital tools, systems, and processes and ensuring that cases and information can be shared securely and efficiently with our partners. We are committed to programmes that seek to improve the quality of case files, digitise processes, and improve efficiency and user experience across the criminal justice system.
We continue to face understandable public scrutiny on our prosecution of some of the most complex and appalling crimes, especially rape and serious sexual offences cases. We remain absolutely committed to improving rape and serious sexual offences prosecutions and the experiences of victims and witnesses. The scale of the challenge is reflected throughout this plan, with the inclusion of the new rape and serious sexual offences Unit Operating Model, the CPS-Police rape and serious sexual offences Joint National Action Plan and the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy. This work is truly system wide, stretching across the CPS, the police, and the courts – it is only together that we can we ensure justice for victims.
Meeting these challenges and delivering the ambitious programme of work outlined here will not be possible without the right people in place. We are expanding the number of core roles working to deliver our commitments – but the expertise required, combined with the complexity of our work, means this will take time. We will be working tirelessly to fill the legal roles necessary to reduce the backlog, improve performance and increase our capability. This will be supported by our refreshed approach to strategic resourcing, as well as enhancing our inclusive culture and prioritising wellbeing.
We are also focusing on managing relationships with external partners in the most effective way possible. Some of our major pieces of work rely on other organisations and suppliers to succeed, and we want to ensure we are managing these partnerships and dependencies in a way that allows for positive collaboration and successful delivery. This is particularly true on key areas of work like Common Platform and Digital Case File. We know that we will be operating in a complex and evolving environment for years to come – but we remain confident that the improvements we are prioritising will not only address these challenges, but also safeguard our ability to deliver fair and independent prosecutions long term.