Integrated Prosecution Teams

Report: 7
Date: 07 February 2008
By: Assistant Commissioner Territorial Policing on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

This report outlines the London Criminal Justice Reform Programme, the proposal to introduce Integrated Prosecution Teams (IPTs) to four further BOCUs within the MPS and the intention to introduce IPTs to all BOCUs

A. Recommendations

That

1. The MPA agree the implementation of Integrated Prosecution Teams throughout the MPS within the projected costings demonstrated in this paper.
2. On the basis of recommendation 1 being agreed, note the roll out of the Integrated Prosecution Teams to the proposed four BOCUs.
3. The MPA note the cost and savings implications of fully implementing Integrated Prosecution Teams.
4. Approve the funding proposals for the programme including the carry forward of TP resources totalling £7.75m

B. Supporting information

London Criminal Justice Reform Programme

1. The Integrated Prosecution Team is part of the London Criminal Justice Board’s three-year (2008 – 2011) plan for delivering criminal justice reform in London. The aim is to deliver the best criminal justice in Europe through a programme of initiatives including:

Simple Speedy Summary Justice (SSSJ) – An initiative to ensure case files are fit for purpose, taking account of court direction and lawyer review so that first hearings are effective and cases proceed to trial in a timely fashion.

• Directors Guidance Quick Process – Now known as Director’s Guidance, Streamlined Process. DGSP is the next step under SSSJ of ensuring that there is proportionality of file build for first hearing in both Not Guilty and anticipated guilty plea cases reducing the bureaucratic burden on police officers of completing unnecessary paper work for the simple cases capable of disposal within the Magistrates court as well as ensuring quality of file build at the later stages
• Virtual Courts (VC) allows for timely first hearings (and where appropriate sentencing) to be conducted remotely via video screens from police custody suites through to courtrooms. The virtual court also introduces the concept of collaborative space. This allows police to upload the file content at the custody stage, which courts and CPS can then directly access, and download whilst at court.
• The integrated prosecution team (IPT) eliminates duplicated effort and inefficiency and improves general housekeeping in line with Bichard and CICA.
• Community Justice - the vision is to engage with the local community and work in partnership with the range of criminal justice agencies, support services, voluntary organisations and community groups to solve the problems caused by offending in the local area.

2. Together these projects form a comprehensive programme of work to improve the delivery of justice by all the London criminal justice agencies, from the investigation stage through to the outcomes at court

The London Criminal Justice Board is charged with local delivery of a number of objectives aimed at improving the criminal justice system. They are:

• Keeping It simple
• Delivering a quicker service
• Making People safer
• Supporting the public

4. The London Criminal Justice Board is now fully established as the delivery mechanism for all Criminal Justice cross agency projects to support their objectives as set out above. The implementation of all new CJ initiatives is governed by the LCJB programme team, which includes resources from all the criminal justice agencies in London.

5. The Sir Ronnie Flanagan ‘Review of Policing’ report to be published in February is expected to recommend three of these projects DGSP IPT and VC to be rolled out nationally.

6. The MPS partially implemented Glidewell in 2000. This initiative introduced the concept of co-locating CPS in MPS buildings to improve efficiency and improve partnership working. Two boroughs introduced Glidewell - Camden and Islington. However, the full Glidewell model was not adopted due in part to proposed cost and also due to the lack of a full partnership approach to the delivery of Criminal Justice at this time, therefore the full vision was not realised. The single file system was not implemented and the two organisations continued to work as separate entities.

7. Since the partial implementation of Glidewell, there has been significant progress in partnership working between the MPS and CPS with the development of the ‘prosecution team’ approach to delivering Criminal Justice in London as shown in the three initiatives referred to below

8. Statutory Charging was introduced in London in 2003. This placed duty prosecutors and charging administrators in police stations to give charging advice and decisions in the more serious cases.

9. The No Witness, No Justice scheme introduced joint police and CPS Witness Care Units in 2004. The MPS have Witness Care Units in each BOCU. CPS staff are employed within Witness Care Units performing the same role as MPS staff.

10. The Effective Trial Management Programme also introduced in 2004 saw the appointment of Case Progression Officers in HMCS, CPS and Police. These officers worked together to identify issues and progress cases through the Court system.

11. These initiatives - implemented since Glidewell – have meant closer working relationships between the CPS and the MPS and a gradual breakdown of cultural barriers between the two organisations which is enabling further improvements to be put into place.

Integrated Prosecution Team Model

12. This report specifically deals with the implementation of Integrated Prosecution Teams (IPTs) at early adopter sites of Bexley, Barnet, Camden and Islington, following the piloting of the initiative at three sites (Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest).

13. These additional sites have been chosen as CPS staff are already co-located. The introduction of Integrated Prosecution Teams will represent change in processes only and allow us to implement these changes in light of lessons learnt from the pilot sites

14. The Integrated Prosecution Team concept involves the co-location of MPS and CPS staff in police stations in order to deliver a more effective service, efficiency savings, performance improvement and improved citizen focus. The principal methods of delivery will be the elimination of the substantial duplication that currently occurs between police and CPS and improvements in the initial case-build that dramatically reduces the need for post charge remedial work. The MPS is committed to reducing bureaucracy and unnecessary paper work to increase the provision of front line service.

15. The proposed structure of Integrated Prosecution Teams has been agreed between the MPS and CPS. The core elements are:

• MPS CJU case clerks being redeployed as case builders working in Case Progression Units preparing case files to the appropriate standard and eliminating subsequent remedial work.
• CPS staff doing the function formerly undertaken by MPS case clerks through elimination of the duplication and bureaucracy between existing MPS and CPS administration.
• MPS staff being redeployed to a Post Prosecution Team role, completing activities such as PNC resulting, CICA claims and compliance with Records Management Branch policy.
• The adoption of a single case file between the two agencies significantly reducing duplication and bureaucracy.

Pilot Site Review

16. The three pilot sites – Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest - have demonstrated:

• Improvement in the ineffective trial rate
• Reduction in Magistrates Court discontinuances,
• Increase in Magistrate Court guilty pleas,
• Reduction in the attrition rate at Magistrates Court.

The review found some other key benefits already being realised, these include;

• Closer liaison between CPS and Witness Care Unit staff enabling victims and witnesses to receive prompt information on the progress of their cases;
• Records Management Branch backlogs have been eradicated with pre IPT backlogs standing at Hackney over 2000 cases, Tower Hamlets over 400 cases and Waltham Forest 130 cases
• Local file on borough at Hackney has reduced from a backlog of over 200 cases to nil
• Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) backlogs have reduced at Tower Hamlets from 75 cases to nil, Hackney 200 cases to 30 and Waltham Forest 150 cases to nil.

Implementation Schedule

17. The implementation schedule will be available at the meeting. This is provisional at this stage and is based upon the known lease expiry dates of CPS accommodation and estimated availability of accommodation within the MPS estate. The timelines for procurement of property and ICT related works are still being confirmed at this stage. Work continues to verify achievable timelines.

CPS Security Vetting

18. CPS staff are security cleared to the level of civil servants which is different to the security level of MPS staff. To mitigate against the risk of allowing staff to work in police buildings that are not vetted to MPS standards, a protocol has been drawn up and agreed with CPS and MPS management board. This protocol stipulates;

• CPS staff will not have access to MPS computer systems
• CPS staff will have restricted access within police buildings
• New CPS staff will be security cleared to MPS standards

Governance

19. There will be an MPS Programme Board incorporating Integrated Prosecution Teams, Virtual Courts and Herald to oversee the implementation of these projects. This will be chaired by the MPS SRO and include membership from the key business areas i.e. Property Services, DOI, HR and training. In addition there will be a joint MPS, CPS and HMCS project board reporting to the London Criminal Justice Board.

C. Race and equality impact

See attached Equality and Impact Assessment at Appendix 1.

D. Financial implications

1. The financial implications of fully implementing IPTs across all BOCUs is shown in table 1. This includes the costs incurred in implementing the three original pilot sites and the savings that have already been achieved. The original proposals assumed that the level of savings that would be achieved following full rollout, would be £4.0m, which has been built into the 2008/11 budget, and this is shown separately in the table. Following a review of the rollout programme the level of saving to be achieved (from 2010/2011 onwards) will increase the overall level of savings to £4.88m

Table 1 

Note: Existing budget costs only include staffing costs, as it is assumed that other non-pay costs remain the same with the exception of photocopying costs.

4. The table above includes a share of the one off project costs for CPS of £1.9m (2007/08 -£0.6m, 2008/10 -£1.3m) to cover the cost of temporary staff during implementation that the MPS have agreed to pay to enable the CPS to undertake additional outstanding MPS and CPS actions on existing case files. The £1.3m has been included in the sum requested to be carried forward from the TP underspend forecast for 2007/08

5. CPS London have also secured funding of £1.8 million to implement IPTs across London, this will fund all their removal, relocation, ICT and furniture costs.

6. Co-locating CPS staff in police stations and within Court Buildings allows CPS London to relinquish their accommodation once the leases on their properties expire from 2010 through to 2014. This will realize, in time, annual savings of approximately £6.2m. The CPS intention is to reinvest some of this saving in additional staff which will allow them to continually undertake additional activities in relation to case files.

7. Current negotiations in relation to rent for the occupation of MPS premises by CPS staff are indicating an amount between £800k to £1m a year. This potential income has not been included in the savings identified from the introduction of IPTs. The lease agreement currently being negotiated between MPS and CPS will build in a provisional agreement in relation to rental charges and the requirement to review this in 2009.

8. On the basis of current estimates the costs in 2008/09 will be some £2.63m more than the provision in the draft 2008-11 budget submission. TP is also requesting a carry forward from the 2007/08 underspend to cover this budget shortfall. The anticipated savings in 2009/10 and beyond are higher than the provision in the current budget submission and will be available to contribute to TP’s future savings targets.

9. The accommodation and DOI estimates are based on the experience gained on the three pilot sites but must be considered indicative at this stage and will be kept under review. An allowance has been included for any building costs associated with displacing staff from existing accommodation to create the necessary space for co-located IPT. The DOI costs reflect CPS needs in placing their ICT in separate MPS infrastructure. Some elements of these costs may be capital and if so will need to be added to the capital programme budget. To the extent that this is the case, any capital expenditure will be matched by a revenue contribution to capital. Any significant variation in costs will be subject of a further report to committee.

10. Provision for the set up costs was made within the TP budget for 2007/08. As the project has been delayed, they will now be incurred in 2008/09 and 2009/10. Approval is, therefore, sought to carry forward these resources (£3.8m in total) to cover these future costs.

11. The costs above assume full roll out of IPTs to existing borough accommodation. Where this is not possible alternative solutions will need to be found which may include the prioritisation of Borough Based Custody Centres at those sites to allow for the implementation of IPTs. The impact of this would be to reduce the costs identified above.

12. The MPS Project Team consists of 1 Inspector, 2 Sergeants, 1 Police Constable and 6 Band Ds at an annual total cost of £430k (based on TP average costs) to manage the research, planning, pilot and full implementation phases of this project.

13. The three pilot sites have demonstrated the ability to realize the savings whilst improving performance in relation to ineffective and effective trials and the discontinuance rate. Table 2 below shows the one off costs that will be incurred by the MPS and CPS in implementing the IPT at the three sites identified for the next phase of implementation. These have been validated by DOI and PSD. These costs are broken down into separate BOCU costs. The full year cashable savings that will be realised from 2008/09 onwards are also shown. Costs for both phases are included in D1

Table 2 – costs/savings for 4 additional BOCUs

E. Legal implications

1. Letters of comfort covered the tenancy of the CPS in the three pilot sites. An overarching lease agreement is currently being drawn up between the two agencies to enable the occupational arrangements be confirmed in a legally binding format. The lease agreement will cover occupancy costs, the maintenance of facilities, CPS furniture heating and lighting and business rates.

2. The lease agreement currently being drawn up between the MPS and CPS includes a clause stipulating a period of notice required by both parties to terminate the CPS occupying our buildings. It is anticipated that this will be a period of between 12 and 24 months.

3. This will allow - in the unlikely event of the lease agreement being revoked - for both the MPS and CPS to review their policies and procedures and implement contingency plans. There would be a need for the MPS to reinvest in staff should the IPT model cease to exist due to termination of lease agreement.

4. The MPS and CPS are currently drawing up a Service Level Agreement this will document the commitment of both parties to implementing and maintaining the IPT model in London.

F. Background papers

None.

F. Contact details

Report author: Commander Mark Simmons, Territorial Policing

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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