CPS rolls out liaison officers for domestic abuse victims

According to a government announcement on GOV.UK, the Crown Prosecution Service will now make two victim-support schemes permanent across every CPS Area in England and Wales. The change many survivors and support workers will notice first is this: every victim of domestic abuse is due to get a dedicated victim liaison officer, not just those in a few pilot areas. If you are not used to the language of the justice system, that matters because the stretch between a charge and a trial can be confusing, slow and frightening. The CPS says this new support is meant to give survivors one clearer line of contact and better information about what is happening in their case.

It helps to pause on who the CPS is. Police investigate and gather evidence, but the Crown Prosecution Service decides whether a criminal case should go ahead and then prosecutes it in court. That means the CPS sits at a crucial point in the process, yet many victims only hear from it in brief, formal or delayed updates. Under this change, victim liaison officers will support domestic abuse victims from charge to trial. Until now, that level of service was already available for victims of rape and serious sexual offences, and for some families bereaved by crime, but not for all domestic abuse survivors.

The announcement also talks about two layers of support. The first is the Universal Service, which the CPS says will give all victims more frequent and better-quality communication. The second is the Enhanced Service, aimed at domestic abuse survivors, with more direct contact through the life of a case. **What this means in practice:** the CPS says it will follow a victim’s preferred method of contact, whether that is by phone, email or post. That may sound like a small administrative detail, but for people living with fear, moving home, or trying to keep communication private, the method of contact can make a real difference.

This national rollout sits inside the CPS Victim Transformation Programme, which began in 2022 after evidence showed victims wanted clearer, quicker and more empathetic communication. Both services have been tested since 2023. The domestic abuse pilot ran in places including Mersey-Cheshire, Hampshire in Wessex, Yorkshire and Humberside, and London boroughs such as Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth and Westminster. Making a pilot permanent is not the same as saying every problem has been fixed. But it does tell us that ministers and CPS leaders believe the model is worth extending across England and Wales, rather than leaving it as a local experiment.

The announcement was marked by a visit to Liverpool from Attorney General Ellie Reeves KC MP, who met leaders from JUSTICE North and joined a roundtable with charities and campaign groups working with victims of crime, including survivors of domestic abuse. Her message was that trust in the justice system depends on victims being able to see and feel that it works for them wherever they live. That second point matters. Reeves said hearing directly from communities outside Westminster should shape justice policy, because what justice and accountability look like in one part of the country will not always look exactly the same elsewhere. For a system often criticised for feeling distant and procedural, that is an important point to make out loud.

Local organisations used the visit to press a harder truth. Fiona Rutherford of JUSTICE North welcomed the decision to make the Mersey-Cheshire pilots permanent and argued that the North is already showing what justice innovation can look like. Ayla Nasuh, chief executive of Merseyside Domestic Violence Service, went further, saying survivors too often carry the exhausting burden of reporting abuse again and again without seeing meaningful action that stops the harm. That is the part worth sitting with. Better communication is valuable, but survivors are not only asking for updates. They are also asking to be believed quickly, protected early, and treated as people living through cumulative harm rather than a series of separate incidents on separate dates.

The wider government frame here is its mission to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. The same notes to editors point to connected measures such as Raneem’s Law, which places domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms and has been rolled out across 17 police forces, including Merseyside Police. They also mention £5 million in extra funding this year, including a pilot of pre-trial meetings at the Crown Court for adult victims of domestic abuse in three CPS areas. For readers trying to keep track, the simplest way to think about it is this: the government is trying to improve several different stages of the system at once. Emergency response, pre-trial preparation and CPS communication are not the same thing, but they meet in the lived experience of a survivor.

There is also a local story inside this national one. JUSTICE North, hosted by Liverpool law firm Broudie Jackson Canter, was set up in 2025 as a regional initiative of the law reform charity JUSTICE. Its work is built around a straightforward idea: justice policy should be shaped by communities, not only by people in Westminster offices. So, what should you watch next? The real test is not the announcement itself but whether survivors across England and Wales actually feel a change when a case reaches the CPS. If liaison officers mean clearer explanations, fewer missed updates and less fear about what comes next, that will matter. If delays stay long and survivors still have to fight to be heard, the justice system will still have more work to do.