ODPP – letter to the Director, Nicholas Cowdery, QC

Dear Mr Cowdery,

Thank you for your participation on the Office's and the Association's Joint Consultative Committee on 23 September, 2003. The Association looks forward to constructive, albeit frank, ongoing discussion with you on issues affecting your Office.

At our meeting last month, your Office asked the Association to lift the work bans imposed by successive directions of the General Secretary of the PSA in recent months.

As I believe you are aware, general meetings of members took place in the following week, and were followed by a meeting of the PSA Departmental (delegates') Committee. As a result of those meetings, recommendations were made to the Acting General Secretary of the PSA that the work bans should continue with some amendments. As a result the Association's Acting General Secretary issued directions to members as detailed in the Association's Industrial Bulletin dated 7 October, 2003, a copy of which is attached.

In addition the PSA's delegates at your Office have requested the Association to advise you formally that pursuant to the binding directions issued by the Association's Acting General Secretary, members have not and will not be dealing with any confiscation matters, including any such applications or orders and that they will not be able to comply with your duties under the Victims Rights Act 1996 and in particular with the amendments to that Act this year. However, members will not be individually advising their managers as to the existence of possible confiscation action on their files nor as to the existence of victims to whom the Victims Rights Act 1996 applies.

The Association has acknowledged that some significant gains have been achieved as a result of representations made by the PSA and others, and action taken by our members, to the Office's Base Budget Review.

However, the fact is that the funding enhancement obtained by your Office as a result of the Budget Review is still far less than that we believe was recommended by the Committee which conducted the review, as well as the needs identified and requested by members and delegates of the PSA.

The average staffing for your Office for the last financial year, prior to the measures you implemented on 31 March, 2003, was 588. Representatives of your Office have informed the Association that the funding now provided allowed for 591 positions plus 26 WAS positions. Only by re-allocating the funding from 10 of the WAS positions has the Office been able to provide, on average, just over one extra solicitor per office. No-one is asserting that this difference will amount to a satisfactory resolution of the workload problems your Office is facing.

Some may believe that this is the reality that everyone in your Office has to live with, and that the continuation of work bans by our members will not result in further budgetary supplementation. However our members believe that these bans have at the very least, relieved them of the unacceptable stress under which they had hitherto been working, thus affording some protection for their health and safety in a way which the Office had not been able to achieve. They also believe that they have been a very significant contributing factor to the budget enhancement which the Office has received, and hope that their continuation will sufficiently impress upon Treasury the continuing needs of the Office. For these reasons, our members have expressly resolved that the PSA's work bans should continue and the Association's General Secretary has determined they will.

Of course, the Association believes our members are continuing to fulfil their contractual obligations, and wishes to continue the dialogue we have recently re-established with you and your representatives to address the issues.

Yours sincerely
STEPHEN SPENCER
for JOHN CAHILL
GENERAL SECRETARY

Previous ODPP industrial bulletin, October 7