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<p>The current version of the Director’s Guidance on Charging (DG6) is the sixth version
and reflects significant changes in the way that cases are investigated, charged,
and prosecuted since the last edition was published in 2013. Those changes include
those revisions made by Attorney General’s Guidelines on Disclosure 2020, and the
revised Codes of Practice 2020 issued under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations
Act 1996 (CPIA).</p><p>The first annual review of the operation of the disclosure
guidelines has just been completed and will be published imminently. That review involved
close collaboration with policing, the CPS and others in the criminal justice system
and has led to some important amendments to the guidelines which should aid front
line policing, particularly in relation to the development of an annex on redaction.
The new approach of the Guidelines gives clear guidance on only providing relevant
information to the CPS, for example by cutting footage from BWV or only including
relevant message chains not an entire phone image. In this way there is less to redact,
thereby helping the burden felt by front line policing. Further, the new, dedicated,
annex on redaction sets out in detail and with examples how to apply the relevance,
necessity and proportionality requirements. It also gives investigators direction
on how to consider where redaction would be disproportionate due to time, resourcing
and by taking counter measures such as enhanced security on document they provide
to the CPS.</p><p>The section on accessing Third Party Material (TPM) has also been
amended to include requirements that clear, pre-existing and recorded reasons must
be present for any TPM request. Not only must requests be necessary and proportionate,
but the Guidelines breakdown the relevant considerations for weighing necessity and
proportionality to direct investigators and prosecutors to consider each issue in
detail. For example: officers are directed to ringfence information to preserve it
but not access it until necessary, and to examine alternative methods for accessing
the same information without intruding into complainant or witness privacy wherever
possible. There is also now a clear requirement to give ongoing, comprehensible and
detailed information to those people whose information is accessed during investigations,
which will help alleviate victims’ concerns about disproportionate and excessive requests.</p><p>The
requirements in DG6 will be updated to reflect the upcoming changes made to the Attorney
General’s guidelines and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), the College of
Policing and the CPS are working together through a National Disclosure Improvement
Plan (NDIP) Working Group to implement the Attorney General’s Guidelines on Disclosure.
That group includes a representative from Leicestershire police. The NDIP group is
accountable to the Joint Operational Improvement Board (JOIB), a national Board chaired
by senior leaders from the CPS, National Police Chiefs' Council and College of Policing,
created to drive up standards in the criminal justice system and improve joint working
in areas including disclosure. The Board’s work is mirrored locally by Joint Operational
Improvement Meetings at police force and local CPS Area level.</p>
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