The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has improved its performance overall but there continues to be a wide disparity in standards between individual areas, research revealed last week.

The annual CPS Inspectorate report concluded that some areas 'perform very well while others still need to improve significantly'.


It added: 'The overall improvement in CPS performance has been achieved at the same time that the service has been taking forward a series of resource intensive national initiatives aimed at strengthening and improving the efficiency of the criminal justice system as a whole.'


These initiatives include the charging scheme under which the CPS is assuming responsibility for the initial decision whether to charge. This was previously a matter for the police.


But the inspectorate warned that a number of CPS areas have found it 'very difficult to maintain existing business and take forward the initiatives which need to be seen as part of their core business'. It suggested that in some instances, mainly in smaller areas, there has been an adverse impact on casework.


The report also found that the need to deploy prosecutors to police stations for pre-charge advice and decision-making has created a strain on resources, substantially limiting the extent to which CPS advocates have been able to exercise their rights of audience in the higher courts.


A CPS spokeswoman said: 'The annual report recognises that an overall improvement in performance has been achieved during a challenging year.


'We are recruiting new lawyers to ensure that we can meet the needs for having duty prosecutors in police stations while being able to take forward our strategy to increase in-house advocacy.'