CPS - decision timeline

[Effat]

Hi,

CPS received my case in mid October. Still havnt received a decision. I thought it takes 28 working days?

How long did everyone else's case take to make decision?

One of my bf has been waiting 16 months

Its a bad case too, you would think it’d be given priority

It used to be that the officer in the case would receive a charging decision back within 28 days but there are huge backlogs. I have known it take 4 months but sometimes it takes longer as what can happen in the background is that the cps can come back to the police several times with 'action plans' which is basically a list of further tasks for the OIC to do before they will look at it.
Once the officer does this and re submits everytime the clock resets to 28 days again, its an absolute joke.

I had a case once where they sent 5 separate action plans so it took about a year in total for the victim to be finally updated of the confirmed charges. It's not good.

Can you say the nature of the offence because that makes a difference.

So if it's a case that is likely to be in the magistrates' court unit it is more likely to be within 28 days.

If crown court or rasso (rape and serious sexual offences) then although it should take 28 days it often is delayed because of the size of the file or complexity (and yes backlogs in some areas).

I had a case once where they sent 5 separate action plans so it took about a year in total for the victim to be finally updated of the confirmed charges. It's not good.

Action plans are necessary if the file submitted to the cps doesn't contain all of the required information. That said multiple action plans are unhelpful unless each time something entirely new arises that couldn't have been anticipated earlier.

The multiple action plans were due to prosecutor not reading all of the information that was provided in action plan 1 or info provided as to why a certain thing was not available as evidence. It just happened again and again, totally ridiculous.