A less robust character than Barbara Mills, head of the Crown Prosecution Service, would have been floored by the flood of savage criticism hurled her way in 1993.

She was pilloried by the police, the Bar and some among her own staff in a widely publicised, and occasionally highly personal, litany of abuse.But apparently hardly bloodied, she tells the Gazette she looks forward to the new year and enthusiastically lists 'lots of plans'.

Bolstered by the conviction that the CPS restructuring plan - cause of much unrest among staff - is absolutely the right course for the service, Mrs Mills has put completion of the project at the top of her agenda.And while conceding that the changes, which trimmed the number of CPS areas from 31 to 13 and flattened the management structure, had affected staff morale, she believes this is more due to human resistance to change than to any fundamental flaw in the plan.In a motherly tone which surfaces frequently when talking about her 6000 staff, she says: 'I don't think most people have a natural instinct to welcome change.

We like our established set up.

We may complain about it but when someone comes to alter it, we don't like it.' For her the analogy of moving house is a fair one to use in connection with the CPS changes: initially terribly disruptive but more than worth it in the end.But the 560 principal crown prosecutors (PCPs) in her employment, will take some convincing.

Their big worry is that they may be stripped of responsibility for managing teams.

A new approach to team work which aims to co-ordinate the casework of lawyers, law clerks and administrators is being tested in pilot projects at present.

Mrs Mills insists that 'nothing is set in stone' and the plans can be adapted if problems emerge.But that said, she is convinced that the only real problem is one of unfamiliarity and that PCPs will settle down to the changes, even welcoming them in time.Mrs Mills brushes aside as 'a bit of a hiccup' a seemingly damning survey by the senior civil servants union, the First Division Association (FDA), which showed that 86% of CPS staff had no confidence in senior management.

The survey also found that three out of five of the 1614 crown prosecutors interviewed felt that CPS policies adversely affected their ability to prosecute effectively.The Director of Public Prosecutions dismissed the survey, when it was published in December, because the methodology was 'suspect' and the questions 'totally slanted'.

Now she says CPS management and the FDA have 'drawn two lines under that survey and have said let's work together'.

The new year will undoubtedly tell whether her brisk dismissal of what she terms 'that episode' is altogether justified.Mrs Mills refuses to be bowed by the bulk of external criticism - mostly because it is, in her view, ill-informed and the work of 'a very vocal, but tiny minority'.

She has scant respect, for example, for the likes of Mike Bennett, chairman of the London Police Federation who 'keeps on churning out [that] old phrase Criminals Protection Society' to describe the CPS.Mrs Mills believes that relations between the service and the police are generally very good around the country.

Nonetheless, 'there are still a few officers' who would dance on its grave.Criticism from the Bar that the CPS has gone soft on crime is taken seriously only to the extent that the evidence holds up.

She describes how she followed up an allegation made at the Bar's AGM that the CPS had downgraded a charge of grievous bodily harm and allowed a bindover.Mrs Mills could not track down the source of the story.

'Now there is an allegation made at an AGM which got lots of publicity.

I must say, I am disturbed when people who after all should be working on evidence and not on hearsay principles, make that sort of allegation.'Mrs Mills points out that if she wanted to, she could join the slanging match with a vengeance.

Oh yes, she could tell tales of botched police files and late returns by barristers.

'But you will never see us doing that,' she says primly.

'I think that the public criticism in which other parts of the criminal justice system feel free to indulge is wrong.'The closing stages of a very trying year brought one piece of hopeful news to Mrs Mills.

Her campaign for audience rights for her 2000 lawyer employees, which she secretly feared was in for another hijacking at the hands of the senior judges, was not derailed.

Indeed, the judges cleared the way for the CPS to plead its case afresh with the Lord Chancellor's advisory committee.Mrs Mills cannot wait.

She is dying for the chance to show the committee that its initial doubts about the CPS's standards of performance are no longer valid.

She will proudly parade her new directorate of case management and her quality assurance systems.

'I am very hopeful,' she says.Contrary to the findings of the FDA survey, Mrs Mills believes that the attainment of extended audience rights is a critical factor in giving the CPS career path added value.

But she is also aware that the campaign has irritated barristers in private practice who are already deeply worried about their dwindling workloads.Indeed, it has been suggested that the criticism of Mrs Mills by the Bar in general for failing to prosecute cases may have been a smokescreen for anger over the CPS bid for more audience rights.

Mrs Mills will only say that the CPS would exercise any new rights responsibly and beyond that she hopes 'that the [practising] Bar can take a wider view of things than just personal self-interest'.Mrs Mills is ushering in the new year with a new public relations campaign aimed at dispelling media ignorance about what the CPS can, and just as importantly, cannot do.

But responsibility to suspects will ensure that the CPS will never be able to supply full answers to the questions the public most wants answered.

Why, for example, the West Midlands police squad was not prosecuted? Mrs Mills, who is straining to tell as much as possible, recognises this.

'It is a delicate balancing act,' she says.

It is also a factor that ensures the CPS will continue to be ready fodder for the critics.