The Gazette is right to highlight the government’s recent announcement on the roll-out of a national independent legal advice scheme for rape victims (ILA). However, there are some misconceptions about the purpose of ILA and how it functions.
The Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) is a lawyer-led charity that has been running an ILA service for over six years. We have also been providing legal training and supervision to a two-year ILA pilot in London, based within a frontline charity, Women and Girls Network, funded by the London Mayor’s office, with a positive academic evaluation at the end of its first year. A steering group containing the police, CPS, Mayor’s office, lawyers and academics seeks to ensure that the legal service is properly understood by officers and prosecutors, and channels of communication can function effectively.
A vital aspect of ILA is its independence. The lawyers are, and are seen to be, entirely separate from any state body. They have salaried roles in the voluntary sector, and the new government scheme is also intended to be offered for tender on a not-for-profit basis. The lawyers are in a position to build relationships of trust with their clients, many of whom lack faith in, or feel let down by, the criminal justice agencies tasked with investigating and prosecuting their reports.
Two key areas of work for ILAs are police requests for victims’ personal data, and Victims’ Right to Review. Katie Wheatley states correctly that requests for victims’ third-party information can be made where they are a reasonable line of enquiry and are necessary and proportionate. Unfortunately, a great many have not been necessary and proportionate, with blanket requests made for a broad range of materials, sometimes spanning an individual’s entire lifetime. It is not uncommon for victims to say that they feel they are under investigation themselves.
Following sustained campaigning by CWJ and other women’s organisations, the Home Office carried out research published in April 2024, which found that half of such requests had no recorded rationale, over a fifth were speculative/generic, and a third were focused on the victim’s credibility rather than the incident. In practice this means that those who are not a ‘perfect victim’ can find themselves outside the protection of the law. For example, women and girls who have been in local authority care during their teens often have social services records documenting bad behaviour, which can then lead to subsequent rape reports being closed on the grounds of ‘victim credibility’. In effect, this allows such victims to be abused with impunity.
Provisions relating to victims’ information requests which came into force on12 January 2026 derive from the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024, and are intended to address concerns expressed by the Information Commissioner in 2022 about police practices in victims’ third-party materials requests in sexual offences cases. Correct application of data protection law is not inconsistent with the need to guarantee fair trials for defendants. It is a rebalancing that allows protection of the defendant’s rights where the evidence requires this, but avoids unwarranted assumptions and fishing expeditions.
Victims Right to Review (VRR) is another area where victims can benefit from a lawyer’s input. CWJ lawyers draft numerous representations for VRR, and over the past six years we have seen many cases re-opened at the VRR stage which have later resulted in convictions. We have challenged many police VRR outcomes through judicial review pre-action protocol letters, the overwhelming majority leading to fresh reviews and other positive developments for the victim.
CWJ is led by solicitors with extensive experience in civil actions against the police and public law. The ILA team also includes lawyers with a criminal defence background. We have a panel of barristers to draw on for advice when needed, who both prosecute and defend. The work crosses over criminal law and procedure and civil remedies, and so training is required for new lawyers, whether they come with criminal or civil experience. This includes training on issues specific to victims of sexual offences and trauma-informed lawyering. A pool of specialists in this area of work needs to be grown.
Expertise in this area requires familiarity with the unique position of a lawyer assisting a victim in the criminal justice system, who is a non-party. We are well aware of our duties to the court, the importance of guarding against any coaching (an obligation which applies to litigators in any context) and the limitations of working with a client who is not entitled to access much of the evidence. Our work attracts legal professional privilege in the same way as other legal advice. Any ILA service will have to work within these parameters.
The direction of travel towards ILA for victims in sexual offences cases is not limited to England & Wales. In Scotland a three-year ILA pilot is to begin shortly, and in 2025 the Scottish Government introduced independent legal representation (ILR) for victims in applications relating to their character and sexual history in the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Act 2025. Ireland and Canada also have state-funded schemes for ILR in sexual history applications and several Australian states have these for applications to admit victims’ sensitive records.
This much needed part of the criminal justice landscape is here to stay, and criminal lawyers for both the Crown and the defence will become increasingly familiar with how to integrate it into their practice.
Nogah Ofer is a solicitor and head of legal advice service and policy adviser at the Centre for Women’s Justice
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