CPS Mersey-Cheshire Response to HMCPSI Area Assurance Inspection of CPS Mersey-Cheshire
Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) has issued a report following its inspection of the performance of CPS Mersey-Cheshire.
The report was issued on 5 April.
The Area was assessed as follows:
Success of CPS People – ‘Good’;
Continuously Improving – ‘Excellent’;
Casework Quality – ‘Fair’; and
Public Confidence – ‘Good’.
The leadership of the Area and its approach to providing learning and development opportunities to legal, operational and managerial staff has been commended in the report.
The Area’s strong and productive relationships with criminal justice partners are also recognised and are cited as reasons for improving outcomes for victims and witnesses and reducing delay in the criminal justice process.
CPS Mersey-Cheshire's focus on continuous improvement is also commended with specific reference being made to the wide sharing and discussion of performance information within it. This has contributed to improved performance in key performance measures, such as hate crime conviction rates which are assessed as ‘outstanding’.
Its management of its resources is rated as ‘Excellent’ and the report recognises that the Area provides a good service to victims and witnesses, although more needs to be done to improve the timeliness and quality of communications to victims.
The Area’s focus on community engagement is also commended and its responsiveness to community feedback referenced specifically.
Although the Area is delivering strong performance in the magistrates’ court, “being better than the national average in many aspects making (it) one of the top performing Areas”, it accepts that more can be done to improve the progression of cases towards trial in both the magistrates’ court and the Crown Court. It also accepts that the timeliness and quality of reviews and disclosure handling, particularly in the Crown Court, needs to improve.
Siobhan Blake, Chief Crown Prosecutor for CPS Mersey-Cheshire, said:
"We welcome the Inspectorate's report and are delighted with the positive findings of our work with staff, partners and victims and witnesses.
"We recognise that there are still aspects of our work which require improvement and the Area will work with its dedicated staff to address these issues and ensure that we deliver improvements for the benefit of the public we serve."
Notes to editors
CPS Mersey Cheshire is based at Walker House in Liverpool City Centre. A small number of lawyers are co-located with a specialised police team at Cheshire Police HQ.
It works with Merseyside and Cheshire police forces. It covers eight magistrates’ courts and two Crown Court centres.
It has just over 200 staff and its budget for 2016-17 was £15,243,771.
In the twelve months to September 2017 the Area finalised 25,355 magistrates’ court cases and 4,256 Crown Court cases.
It secured convictions against 88% of defendants in magistrates’ court cases and 80.9% of defendants in the Crown Court. In both the Magistrates and Crown Court, Mersey-Cheshire performs better than the national average.
The domestic abuse conviction rate is much better than the national average and the Area has the highest conviction rates for disability and homophobic and transphobic hate crime.