CPS Board meeting minutes - September 2024

19 September 2024, 14:00-17:00pm, Petty France and via MS Teams

Members

Monica Burch (Chair) (Lead Non-Executive Board Member), Stephen Parkinson (DPP), Simon Jeffreys (NEBM), Subo Shanmuganathan (NEBM), Kathryn Stone (NEBM)

Guests

Tristan Bradshaw (Interim Director of Operational Change & Delivery), Baljit Ubhey (Director of Strategy & Policy), Andrew Hunt (Portfolio Manager), James Crutchley (Deputy Director of Finance, Risk & Assurance), Rose Cowley (Senior Strategy Advisor), Mike Baker (Deputy Director of Commercial, Estates and Health & Safety)

Secretariat

Max Looker, Stephanie Bradshaw

Apologies

Steve Buckingham (CFO)

Item 1: Declaration of any conflicts

1.1 No additional conflicts of interest were raised.

Item 2: Minutes of the last meeting and matters arising

2.1 The Board reviewed and agreed the minutes.

Item 3: Update from the DPP

3.1 The DPP provided an update on the following key points:

Disorder

• The CPS had reacted robustly in respect of  the recent disorders, with many staff working out of hours and leaders ensuring they were visible both internally and externally. It was noted that public confidence had risen in terms of fairness, effectiveness and independence.
• The aim of the CPS now had to be to maintain this level of confidence and improve.

3.2 It was noted that the Legal Governance Group (LGG) had received a comms session, and they were devising training packages for senior leaders on handling the media.

Crown Advocates

• The DPP noted that there had been a dramatic impact on retention of trainee solicitors since implementation of phase 1 of the CA strategy.
• From 47 recently qualified members of staff, 45 had agreed to stay with the CPS.
• The next phase of the CA strategy would be trickier due to the need to backfill existing posts.
• The DPP confirmed that the Bar was supportive.

3.3 The Board queried whether the Bar Standards Board had been engaged during the development and implementation of the strategy and it was agreed that the DPP would follow-up with the team to ensure all necessary engagement had been undertaken.

3.4 Action Plans

• The DPP was pleased that the Executive had decided to place a limit on the number of action plans returned to the Police following file review. The revised process ensured the CPS had more direct engagement with the Police.
• It was confirmed that this interaction was having an impact and improving performance.

3.5 It was noted that a video had been created by the Police to highlight some of the issues with engagement and this was helping the CPS understand its impact on the relationships across the CJS.

Item 4: Q1 Performance

4.1 Tristan joined the meeting and provided an update on performance, focusing on the following key areas.

• Seven of the nineteen KPIs were showing improvement, which is good progress due to the challenging benchmarks being set.
• Work was focused on improving front-end processes.
• Victims and witnesses’ engagement had seen an improvement in quality but a decline in timeliness.
• Casework governance was under review and would be considered by the Board at the next quarterly performance update.
• The ABM leadership programme was highlighted as providing accountability at Area level.

4.2 The Chair queried why incomplete cases weren’t sent back to the Police on receipt and it was confirmed that this formed part of the early advice process which had created some blurred lines.

4.3 The Board also queried what would happen if the CPS were to focus all its resources on reducing the backlog and ignore any other programmes of work within the CPS. It was confirmed that there were too many external factors contributing to delays in the system, which meant that such action by the CPS would not impact the backlog.

4.4 The Board welcomed the improvements made in the performance report but requested that future reports provide an indication of progress in the following period to provide further insight into the direction of travel.

4.5 The Shadow Board Chair noted the SB discussion on the levels of casework and the number of CTLs and suggested a review of the average days lost figure as these may provide some insight to the way workloads are being felt on the frontline.

Item 5: Q1 Business Plan Update

5.1 Baljit and Andrew joined the meeting and provided the Board with the following key points from the Q1 Business Plan report.

• The updated process is more robust and provides more detailed reports.
• SROs have been contacted to explain the drivers for the change.
• The General Election has necessitated some reframing of CPS’ commitments.
• Benefits realisation has been a key factor in the development of the upgraded reporting suite.

5.2 The Board welcomed the report and were provided with assurance that the confidence level of Amber was about right, in the context of being able to deliver the plan. The Board also asked for future reports to specify the governance in place for each actions so the Board could take additional assurance that the steps being taken are appropriate.

5.3 The Shadow Board suggested the plan should be shared more widely across the organisation in order to achieve greater buy-in and queried whether the risks were being articulated in the right way, as it appeared there may be other issued that needed to be included.

5.4 The Board challenged the use of “re-baselining” as this implied that delays were being recorded inappropriately. It was confirmed that “re-baselining” was being used to indicate a delay but that these were often as a result of external factors, outside the control of the CPS. It was also noted that the POG will be best placed to look at the reasons for the delays against the wider context. It was agreed that future reports should include reference to dependencies so that the business plan can report against CPS’ level of completion, wherever necessary.

Item 6: Spending Review

6.1 Baljit, James and Rose provided an update on the development of the Action Plan and the research projects.

6.2 It was noted that wider comms had been issued to the leadership cadre and that work was continuing to influence cross government alignment on VAWG bids. HMT had provided confirmation that they would provide funding to allow the CPS to adequately manage the increase in costs for 2024/25 but that the next phase would require further negotiation.

6.3 The Board welcomed the update and congratulated the team on developing a robust bid for phase one. It was noted that the next phase would need to be bolder and that lessons had been learned from the current exercise, and from previous years, to ensure the CPS had the best chance of maximising its budget for 2025/26.

6.4 The DPP confirmed that EG had been discussing the possibility of identifying indirect benefits during the next stage of the process and he welcomed the input from the Board, received by the team out of committee.

Item 7: Portfolio Oversight Group

7.1 James provided an overview of the Portfolio Oversight Group (POG). James confirmed that the Portfolio Office was being recruited and staff would be in place to support the POG and to provide wider support to the whole of the CPS.

7.2 The Board queried how the organisation was reacting to the implementation of standards and wanted assurance that the cost of delivery was not outweighing the cost of any benefits. James confirmed that the POG was working to improve accountability and driving progress across the CPS with deep dives into specific programmes of work. The Shadow Board confirmed that the approach was welcomed by its members as they could see the benefits of its coordination role in the delivery of projects. The Shadow Board also suggested that comms should be developed which highlighted the change map of the CPS so that staff could better understand the roll-out of change.

7.3 The Board suggested that there should be a reporting process so that the non-execs can be provided with a regular update on progress. It was agreed that this would be considered in tandem with the Business Plan reporting schedule.

Item 8: Estates Strategy

8.1 Mike Baker provided the key highlights from the strategy.

• The strategy has been co-created with the GPA.
• A theory of change model has been approached following discussion with SPD.
• The revised Hybrid Working policy has been included in the development of the strategy.

8.2 It was noted that further comms was required to ensure that staff were aware that Hybrid working had been taken into account across the estate.

8.3 The Board noted the work that had gone into the strategy but queried what would happen if the funding required to update the estate was not included in the Spending Review bid. Mike confirmed that a plan B is in place and that the strategy was to maximise the funding received by focusing works that are necessary. The Board requested the detail to support the prioritisation of estates work for a future meeting.

Item 9: AOB

9.1 The Board wanted to reiterate their thanks for the work of the Spending Review team for the excellent work to date.

9.2 Finally, Max noted that the Board Operating Framework had been revised and would be issued out of committee for consideration.

Meeting closed.

Secretariat – Max Looker & Stephanie Bradshaw

September 2024