Time it takes to respond to a complaint

Sheila Oliver made this Freedom of Information request to Crown Prosecution Service This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

The request was successful.

Dear Crown Prosecution Service,

What is the average time it takes the CPS to respond to a complaint? I received an acknowledgement 8th October 2009 and the matter is still no nearer resolution, with an acquitted, innocent man being repeatedly harassed by Stockport Council and the CPS.

A Crown Prosecution document was passed by someone to the Leader of Stockport Council, Councillor Goddard, who breached the Data Protection Act in sending it to me for some obscure reason. I would like answers to what has been going on.

Yours faithfully,

Sheila Oliver

Freedom of Information Unit, Crown Prosecution Service

Dear Ms Oliver

Please note that this unit deals with requests for recorded information only. If you wish to complain about the service you have received from a CPS Area you should write to [email address].

It is unlikely that we will hold information on the average time it takes the CPS to respond to a complaint. Please let me know if you would still like to make this FOI request.

With regard to your query on the Data Protection Act I will need more details before I can look into the matter.

Regards

Paul Willman
Information Management Unit
CPS

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Dear Freedom of Information Unit,

I would have thought that any well run organisation would hold statistics on such matters. How can you know how well or badly you are doing if you don't collect that information?

As in the case of my complaint, the Crown Court judge was astonished at how public money was being wasted on repeatedly bringing someone to court (having imprisoned him in a tough Manchester prison for an alleged sneeze which didn't even happen). The same man is back in court facing the same CPS prosecutor, who shouldn't be allowed within bargepole distance of him. Confidential CPS documents were given to the Leader of Stockport Council who sent them to me in breach of the Data Protection Act. What on earth is going on here? How did he get hold of them? My complaint was submitted last September. Something should have been done about it by now.

I have also taken the matter to the National Audit Office - this ridiculous case has probably cost hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money and the poor man is still being persecuted. You really couldn't make it up.

The CPS should start collecting statitics regarding its competence.

If I don't hear soon I shall be back to Keir Starmer, DPP cc The Editor of the Guardian

Yours sincerely,

Sheila Oliver

Freedom of Information Unit, Crown Prosecution Service

Dear Ms Oliver

Please confirm that you wish to make the following request:

- What is the average time it takes the CPS to respond to a
complaint?

As soon as you confirm this I will log and process the request.

If you wish to make a complaint please contact:
[1][email address]

Regards

Paul Willman

Information Management Unit

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Dear Freedom of Information Unit,

Yes please.

Yours sincerely,

Sheila Oliver

Freedom of Information Unit, Crown Prosecution Service

Dear Ms Oliver

Re: FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 REQUEST

Thank you for your request for information which was received on 15 April
2010. Your request is as follows:

- What is the average time it takes the CPS to respond to a complaint?

We are dealing with it under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act
2000. Please note there is a 20 working day time limit (from receipt of
request) in which we are required to respond to requests under the Freedom
of Information Act 2000. The deadline for your request is 14 May.
However, we will endeavour to respond sooner.

In some circumstances a fee may be payable and if that is the case, we
will let you know the likely charges before proceeding.

Yours sincerely

Paul Willman

Information Management Unit

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Crown Prosecution Service

2 Attachments

Dear Ms Oliver

Please find attached our response.

Regards

Paul Willman

Information Management Unit

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Sheila Oliver

Dear Crown Prosecution Service,

Thank you so much for your reply. What an absolutely huge number of complaints! I must say from my admittedly limited observation of the CPS in action I am not surprised. What shocked me was how defendants are publicly laughed about and talked about in court by various officials, even when their own families are sitting in the public gallery. That would not be allowed to happen in the NHS - publicly discussing and laughing about patients. Not something which would ever be contemplated anyway.

This is the case that shocked me personally:-

http://www.stockportexpress.co.uk/news/s...

How the CPS could have assisted Stockport Council in hounding this poor, innocent chap is beyond me and the CPS - last I heard - was still trying to prosecute him. In addition, the Leader of Stockport Council sent me a confidential Crown Prosecution document about this chap. How on earth did he get it? Sending it to me was a breach of the Data Protection Act.

I think the number of complaints to the CPS seems a bit worrying. My feeling is that, as in Mr Parnell's case, the CPS is compliant in using criminal ASBOS to suppress and imprison innocent people who show up the failings of local politicians - surely not what I pay you for.

I keep wondering if there is some Masonic connection here.

Yours sincerely

Sheila Oliver

William Miles left an annotation ()

Dear Ms Oliver

Surely the question for CPS is not how quickly are complaints responded to but what proportion of complaints receive an answer that is satisfactory to the complainant?

William M

Sheila Oliver (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

Dear Mr Miles

Now the matter is not subjudice and no longer involves minors, I can give you very brief details. I raised the matter three times with Keir Starmer himself without success.

A gentle, simple chap adopted two daughters from Stockport Council. The girls had had a terrible time with their birth parents - truly horrible. They were receiving counselling from After Adoption but Stockport Council decided to stop funding this. The Council received about £600,000 of government money to help adopting families with such problems. One of the girls had the wrong details on her official documents, so if, for example, he took her to A & E she didn't exist officially. He wanted that error correcting and as the girls grew their troubled past affected them and he needed the counselling they were receiving to continue.

When he adopted the girls he earned £10,000 per annum, his wife gave up work to look after the girls, he was told not to do overtime in order to spend quality time with the girls. Although he was on full council tax benefit, the Council says he has amassed arrears of several thousand pounds, which started as a circa £300 underpayment which has grown like Topsy.

After a decade of trying to get counselling for his daughters, trying to get the official document sorted out and trying to get the arrears of council tax sorted out (which he says he never owed because he was on full council tax benefit anyway)and getting nowhere, he decided to emulate Brian Haw and stand in peaceful protest outside the town hall until the highly paid panjandrums at Stockport Council (well over £100,000 per annum) and the equally highly paid councillors helped him. They didn't (LibDems), neither would his local MP, Andrew Stunell (LibDem).

Instead they called the police over 150 times (this is Greater Manchester where we have massive policing issues), one court case dropped on the day of the hearing, multiple imprisonments in tough Forest Bank prison, 8am to 8pm house arrest, 50 actual arrests, nights and nights in police cells, a court case of assault with a sneeze with intent to inflict a council employee with a pre-swine flu cold (of which he was acquitted), further arrests, a 3 day £10,000 per day jury trial at Manchester Crown Court where he was accused (as has been the case every time except the ludicrous sneeze episode) of merely going to Stockport Council peacefully to ask for the help he and his daughters so desperately need. They are now trying to send the bailiffs in over this council tax arrears. How will that help his troubled daughters to be homeless? Mr Parnell was very, very sick but still the local CPS chap, I think called Eddie Cole, was determined to have him sent back to prison.

The CPS is not prosecuting rapists because they don't have the resources but they can help persecute this innocent man. I saw the police called with blue flashing lights when he tried to use the town hall public lavatory, when he had written authority from the Council Chief Exec to do so. He was arrested for trying to attend his own benefits tribunal when the judge at one of his trials said he had to claim benefits in order to get Legal Aid.

The whole issue is so ludicrous and damaging and has probably cost the taxpayer several hundred thousand pounds.

Stockport Council has been criticised by the local coroner for their part in driving vulnerable people to suicide - like Andrea Adams the 18 year old who jumped to her death from a high rise block of flats and Alison Davies who jumped from the Humber Bridge with her 9 year old autistic son Ryan. The serious case reviews said that Stockport Council must help people who come to them asking for help with vulnerable children - exactly what our town hall protester did.

You have to see, surely, why I seek to explain all this expensive and dangerous lunacy as some sort of Masonic back scratching club. What other explanation could there be?

If you have been, thanks for listening.

Kind regards

Sheila