CPS paid out £1.2m in wasted costs last year

The Crown Prosecution Service paid out £1,202,515 in wasted costs orders and adverse costs in civil proceedings last year, freedom of information figures have revealed.

James Parry, the solicitor advocate who made the FOI request, said the sum could rise as a result of a 'work to rule' launched by Liverpool lawyers earlier this month.

The figures show that payments by the CPS totalled only £153,878 in 2006, before rising to over £1.5m in 2011. They fell back to £384,682 in 2012, before jumping to over £1.2m last year.

Parry said that since the half-day protest by criminal lawyers across the country at the start of this month, solicitors in Liverpool had been "as robust as we can" in resisting late, incomplete applications and evidence served out of time.

"I imagine that the CPS will lose more applications and, if the courts become frustrated, they could end up with more wasted costs orders."

Parry said the figures obtained by his FOI request were the first to be published, but the CPS had not produced a breakdown to show which orders were made under the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 and which made as a result of third party contempt or in civil proceedings ancillary to a criminal prosecution.

Parry said he made the FOI request because his firm had made its own wasted costs application in a case involving a serviceman accused of a serious assault on a taxi driver. The serviceman has since returned to Afghanistan, but criminal proceedings will continue later this year.

The solicitor advocate said the CPS served unused material on the defence on the day of the trial which revealed that one of the prosecution's main witnesses had not seen anything.

"It is not unusual for us to turn up at court and for this kind of thing to happen. One of my colleagues was trapped at court for one and a half hours recently because of a sat nav error by the prosecution. It sounds funny, but we no longer get paid waiting time.

"The figures demonstrate that the Ministry of Justice, which is ultimately responsible for the CPS, can't run efficient business structures. A lot of the problems are a result of the way cuts to the CPS budget have been implemented."

A CPS spokeswoman said: "The CPS strives to prosecute all cases fairly and effectively. We prosecute over 800,000 cases a year, and we are required to pay costs orders in just a tiny fraction of these – fewer than 400 criminal cases in 2012/13.

"There may be others made in civil proceedings where cost orders are routinely made against the unsuccessful party, rather than in order to reflect any issues with the handling of the case.

"Where a costs order is made against the CPS we will look at the reasons for this to identify whether there were any failings on the part of the prosecution that could have been avoided."

The spokeswoman added that the CPS estimated that at least 40 per cent of the costs paid out in the financial year 2012-3 related to civil proceedings, and it would not be accurate to suggest that civil costs orders reflected any "negligence or improper conduct on the CPS’s part".

She added that payments made in costs orders "vary significantly from year to year and often relate to cases finalised in previous years" and it was likely that the figures reflected a "large application in one particular case" rather than an increase in the overall amount awarded against the CPS.