An absence of leadership and “serious management failings” have meant little has been done to improve the state of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Gwent since a previous inspection in 2007, Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) has said. Poor file submission by Gwent Police has also been partly blamed.

The report on CPS Gwent, released last week, said that many areas that raised serious concerns two years ago have shown no improvement and in some areas have deteriorated because of bad management.

Gwent Police was blamed in part for the continued poor performance as file examination highlighted that the quality of the files received by the CPS from the force was “poor and frequently subject to unacceptable delay”.

This is believed to have added pressure to the job of the CPS, unnecessarily increased the workloads and had an impact on the cases coming to the magistrates’ court.

“Far too often cases have not been fully prepared in line with expected timescales. This has resulted in the court losing patience and there is very little leeway given. As a result, cases are being discontinued prematurely,” the report said.

Poor case progression by the CPS and difficulties in serving the court and defence with timely papers has fuelled a blame culture that was developing in 2007, the report said, adding that open attribution of blame in court is “particularly unsatisfactory” as it has the potential to affect the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system.

Having discussed the problem with Gwent Police, the force is substantially increasing resources to improve ‘front-end’ file building and file management to address some of the long-standing problems. The CPS is now encouraged to work with the force as equal partners to ensure that this change is effectively managed to deliver agreed benefits.