Crown Prosecution Service — England and Wales’s independent public prosecutor

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the principal public prosecuting authority for England and Wales, established as a non-ministerial government department and Crown body under the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 and operational from 1986. It sits independent of both the police and the government of the day, with responsibility for deciding whether evidence gathered by police is sufficient, and whether it is in the public interest, to bring a criminal charge to trial. In Quarter 3 of the 2024–25 financial year, the CPS recorded a conviction rate of 83.0% across 93,486 completed prosecutions. Its headquarters are on Petty France in London.

Key facts

Country: United Kingdom
Founded: 1985
Headquarters: Petty France
Type: non-ministerial government department; Crown body
Website: https://www.cps.gov.uk/

Origins and the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985

Before the CPS existed, police forces in England and Wales both investigated crimes and conducted prosecutions, which critics argued created a conflict of interest and allowed weak cases to proceed to trial. The Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 addressed this by drawing a clear line: the police investigate, and the CPS prosecutes. Prosecutors were given the authority to decide whether to pursue a case, with the stated purpose of reducing the number of ill-founded prosecutions reaching court.

The Act’s scope was wider than its headline reform. It included provisions on costs in criminal cases, set time limits for the preliminary stages of criminal proceedings, and repealed section 9 of the Perjury Act 1911. The CPS became operational in 1986, the year the Code for Crown Prosecutors was first published under section 10 of the same Act.

Structure and leadership

The CPS is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), a post appointed by the Attorney General. In the hierarchy of public prosecutors, the DPP ranks third, sitting below the Attorney General and the Solicitor General. Stephen Parkinson has held the role since 1 November 2023, appointed for a five-year term that runs until the end of October 2028.

A separate senior post, Director General Legal Delivery, was created and filled on 9 June 2025, when Grace Ononiwu CBE was appointed to the role. Ononiwu had previously served as Director of Legal Services within the CPS from April 2021.

How charging decisions are made

Before any prosecution begins or continues, prosecutors apply what the CPS calls the Full Code Test. The test has two stages. The first is the evidential stage, which asks whether there is a realistic prospect of conviction. Only if that threshold is met does the prosecutor move to the second stage: the public interest stage, which considers whether bringing the case to trial serves the public interest.

Outside standard office hours, charging decisions are handled by CPS Direct, the service’s out-of-hours unit. CPS Direct operates from 5 pm to 9 am on weekdays and around the clock at weekends and on bank holidays, providing national charging decisions to police forces across England and Wales.

Disclosure failings and the 2018 review

In January 2018, the CPS announced that senior prosecutors would review all cases in England and Wales where someone had been charged with rape or serious sexual assault. The announcement followed the collapse of several prosecutions attributed to failures to disclose unused material to defence teams.

Strategy and priorities from 2025

The CPS published a Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy covering the period 2025 to 2030. The strategy sets out aims to improve the quality of casework and to increase public trust in the way the CPS handles offences including rape, domestic abuse, stalking, and honour-based abuse.

In June 2026, the CPS published two further strategy documents: the Serious Economic and Organised Crime (SEOC) Strategy 2030 and the International Strategy 2030. Both are aimed at strengthening prosecutions of serious organised crime, deepening collaboration with international partners, and placing asset recovery at the centre of prosecution strategy.

Did you know

Stephen Parkinson, who became DPP in November 2023, started his legal career in 1984 as a junior prosecutor at the department of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the body that became the CPS in 1986. He later spent 20 years as a practising defence lawyer and became Senior Partner at Kingsley Napley in 2018. (cps.gov.uk)
The Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 is best known for creating the CPS, but its scope extended further: it also legislated on court costs in criminal cases, introduced time limits for the preliminary stages of criminal proceedings, and repealed section 9 of the Perjury Act 1911. (legislation.gov.uk)

Data sources

Data updated: 2026-10-29