Performance in other areas

Equality of service delivery

Justice, by its nature, requires fairness, which is why ensuring everyone is treated with respect, impartiality, dignity and without bias is central to how we work at the CPS.

We continue to deliver programmes of work to help our people lead inclusively and to strengthen public confidence in the CPS. This includes engaging with communities; using feedback, evidence and other relevant insights to improve policy and practice; making effective use of technology and data to support delivery and broaden our reach; and playing an active role in promoting inclusion across the criminal justice system, working with partners to support lasting change.

We are proud to be recognised as one of the UK’s most inclusive employers. Our efforts to increase workforce diversity have positioned us as one of the most diverse organisations within the Civil Service. We are proud signatories to the Business in the Community, Race at Work Charter, and we are acknowledged as a Disability Confident Leader and Carer Confident Employer.

Additionally, Working Families has ranked us among the top 10 most family-friendly workplaces in the country for the last eight years and we will be sending submissions for Carer Confident Employers this year.

We have previously featured in the Social Mobility Index top 75 UK employers and will be sending in refreshed submissions for this and Disability Confidence next year.

Our established national and local community engagement mechanisms include:

Community accountability forums and national scrutiny panels;
Stakeholder consultation groups on Violence Against Women and Girls, hate crime, mental health, and child sexual abuse;
Community conversations and local scrutiny involvement panels
Victims reference groups, which include survivors of rape and serious sexual offences; victims of wider crime types such as domestic abuse, hate crime and fraud; and family members bereaved by crime
A national Disproportionality Advisory Group

All of these forums are supported by a range of stakeholders including community and specialist voluntary community sector organisations, expert academics, and community representatives. This year, we have held a number of national forums including:

A National Rape Scrutiny Panel with policing and specialist voluntary community sector partners to scrutinise and draw out learning from recent finalised rape cases.
Consultation sessions with male survivors of domestic abuse, sexual assault and rape, to inform the review of the CPS statement on male victims for crimes covered by the CPS VAWG Strategy;
A so-called Honour Based Abuse (HBA) and Forced Marriage (FM) National Scrutiny Panel – the first of its type, in which discussions centred on the development of a statutory definition of so-called HBA;
Consultations domestic abuse. The second national Honour Based Abuse Conference in partnership with the Home Office and National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), which will inform updates to the NPCC/CPS Joint Protocols for HBA and FM and new prosecution guidance for HBA, FM and Harmful Practices, due to be published later this year;
Victims Reference Group meetings to support the development of a range of victim facing products and services, including the structure of victim letters, training for CPS staff and videos guides for victims, such as those on special measures, which explain in plain English what special measures are, who can ask for them, and how asking for them works;
A joint CPS and NPCC Race Disproportionality Conference for senior leaders to explore what more the criminal justice system can do to tackle race disproportionality and share insights and good practice.

We recognise that disproportionality can affect public confidence, and we continue to work with criminal justice and community stakeholders to identify, address and monitor any disproportionality, including through our Local Joint Enterprise and Disproportionality Scrutiny Panels and Joint Enterprise National Monitoring Scheme.

We have also seen an ongoing increase in antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate crimes, and recognise the impact on communities and public confidence. As well as our national and local mechanisims that review hate crime cases, the CPS is an active member of the NPCC Gold Group on Community Tensions, attended by civil society organisations including the Jewish and Muslim civil society groups. The forum meets regularly to hear directly from community representatives and to ensure a joined-up response from criminal justice partners.

We continue to work across government and with those disproportionately impacted by a range of crime types, including Violence Against Women and Girls, to improve outcomes for victims and witnesses, prosecuting independently, without bias, and seeking to deliver justice in every case.

Complaints to Parliamentary Ombudsman

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) looks at complaints about UK government departments and other UK public organisations. The PHSO was set up by Parliament to provide an independent complaint handling service for complaints that have not been resolved by UK government departments.

The PHSO has jurisdiction over the CPS in respect of the Victims’ Code and therefore can only consider complaints from members of the public if we have not met its obligations under the Victims’ Code.

Full details of the Victims Code can be found at GOV.UK' and use the GOV.UK as a link to: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-code-of-practice-for-victims-of-crime.

In the 2025-26 financial year, the PHSO received 65 complaints regarding the CPS. In the same period 53 complaints were concluded at initial checks and primary investigation without an assessment. The reasons for not progressing these 53 cases include that they are out of PHSO’s remit, premature and had not completed the CPS complaints process, and not properly made. No case was accepted for detailed investigation, but at the end of the year the PHSO held twelve complaints that were undergoing early consideration or assessment.

Stephen Parkinson
Director of Public Prosecutions
6 July 2026