The Crown Prosecution Service will make permanent two victim-support models that had been running as pilots: its Universal Service for all victims and its Enhanced Service for survivors of domestic abuse. According to the government announcement, both schemes will now operate across every CPS Area in England and Wales. The most significant change is that all victims of domestic abuse will, for the first time, be offered a dedicated victim liaison officer from charge to trial. The CPS says that level of case contact had previously been reserved for victims of rape and serious sexual offences, and for families bereaved by crime.
The rollout forms part of the CPS Victim Transformation Programme, launched in 2022 after evidence showed victims wanted clearer, quicker and more empathetic communication from prosecutors. In practical terms, the programme is intended to give the CPS a more structured service model for victim contact alongside its prosecutorial role. Under the Universal Service, all victims are due to receive more frequent and better-quality communication. Under the Enhanced Service, domestic abuse victims will receive additional contact through the life of the prosecution, with the CPS also committing to use the victim's preferred method of communication, whether by telephone, email or post.
The CPS and the Attorney General's Office are presenting the national move as an expansion of tested practice rather than a new standalone scheme. Both services have been piloted since 2023. The Universal Service ran in Yorkshire and Humberside, Mersey-Cheshire and Wessex. The Enhanced Service for domestic abuse victims was tested in Mersey-Cheshire, Hampshire within Wessex, Yorkshire and Humberside, and the London boroughs of Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth and Westminster. For policy observers, that matters because the national rollout follows live testing across different local contexts, caseloads and partnership arrangements.
The announcement was marked by a visit to Liverpool from the Attorney General, Ellie Reeves KC MP, who met senior figures from JUSTICE North and joined a roundtable with charities and campaign organisations working with victims of crime, including survivors of domestic abuse. She also met CPS frontline teams involved in the Mersey-Cheshire pilot. In the government's account of the visit, Reeves linked victim support directly to trust in the justice system. Her position was that victims need to be heard, supported and treated with dignity throughout the process, not only at trial, and that communication between charge and trial is a key part of whether the system feels credible to those using it.
The regional evidence cited alongside the announcement is also politically relevant. JUSTICE North, established in 2025 as a regional initiative of the law reform charity JUSTICE and hosted by Broudie Jackson Canter, said the Mersey-Cheshire pilots showed the North of England at the forefront of justice innovation. Its view was that making the schemes permanent should improve support for victims nationally. Ayla Nasuh, chief executive of Merseyside Domestic Violence Service, used the visit to make a related but sharper point about system performance. She said survivors too often face the repeated burden of reporting and evidencing abuse without prompt action to disrupt the behaviour causing harm, and called on government to ensure the justice system recognises cumulative harm and acts swiftly to protect victims.
The government announcement places the CPS rollout inside its wider mission on violence against women and girls. It links the new domestic abuse service to the stated aim of halving VAWG within a decade, which means prosecution-stage communication is being presented as one part of a broader cross-system response rather than an isolated reform. The same policy frame includes Raneem's Law, which the government says has embedded domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms across 17 police forces, including Merseyside Police. The announcement also refers to an additional £5 million secured earlier this year, part of which is supporting a pilot of pre-trial meetings at the Crown Court for adult victims of domestic abuse in three CPS areas, including Mersey-Cheshire.
For victims, the operational change is straightforward: the CPS is attempting to make contact more regular, more predictable and more closely matched to how people actually want to receive information. For prosecutors and support services, the change creates a clearer service expectation at the point where many victims report confusion, disengagement or a sense that their case has gone silent. National rollout now shifts attention from pilot results to delivery across every Area. The next practical question is whether the CPS can match the standard achieved in pilot sites on timeliness, continuity and victim-specific contact. If it does, the reform will alter how domestic abuse victims experience the prosecution process in England and Wales.