Specialist Prosecutor

Job summary

This is a great opportunity to join the Serious Economic, Organised Crime and International Directorate (SEOCID) at Crown Prosecution Service. SEOCID prosecutes serious economic, organised crime and organised child sexual abuse, including where there is an international element to the case.

Our specialist legal skills enable us to work in partnership with investigators to combat ever-evolving crime types and protect the public. We achieve this by making high-quality legal decisions, through international engagement and using legal assistance, extradition and asset recovery tools, working proactively with stakeholders and operating as a strong internal team that supports each other’s success.

It represents a new approach to tackling the large scale, sophisticated criminal offending that threatens domestic and international security.

We are a centre of excellence in the Crown Prosecution Service and have a team of specialist prosecutors who are responsible for legal decision making, case ownership and case progression, handling the most serious and complex cases.

For further information about the role, please see attached 'SP - a day in the life'

The Crown Prosecution Service is based in England and Wales. If you’re applying for this role and live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you must let us know when accepting this offer as you need permission to work from your home address if hybrid working is part of your role. There’s no guarantee that we will grant this approval.

You must be aged 18 before starting in this role. The start date is expected to be 8-12 weeks after the application deadline.

The roles are based in the Regional and Wales and International London South East teams which predominantly deal with serious economic and organised crime.

There are 7 roles available, as below:

Regional Wales Division (RWD) offices (6 posts) - Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester

International London South East Division (ILSED) offices (1 post) - London

Offers will be made in merit order, taking into account your stated location preference.

Job description

Your roles and responsibilities

• you analyse evidence and review files- engaging with the Police, HMRC, NCA, NHS, PIPCU, DWP, Immigration Enforcement and other agencies, including investigators and prosecutors from foreign jurisdictions to determine who to charge, the appropriate charges and number of trials needed.
• you apply well-developed knowledge of criminal law, procedure and evidence, demonstrating excellence in legal analysis, advocacy and drafting skills in casework.
• you provide high quality advice to police and other investigatory bodies, as well as to Crown Prosecution Service. Areas and Divisions, at the commencement of operations, pre-charge and post arrest. Advice work requires the ability to deal with and analyse high volume material, provide clear guidance and direction on admissibility of evidence, disclosure, unused material and Crown Prosecution Service guidance and policy and provide timely charging advice.
• you work effectively and persuasively with a wide range of people, internally and externally, as part of a multi-skilled team or individually to ensure the effective and successful prosecution of cases. You engage with all relevant agencies for debriefings following each case to learn lessons, improve practice and share findings from debriefings with colleagues to improve the quality of the Unit’s casework and overall performance.
• you represent the Crown Prosecution Service, both internally and externally, with the ability to communicate effectively with victims and/or witnesses; keeping them informed about the progress of the case and any decisions to stop the case or substantially alter the charge and seeking appropriate support to help them to give their best evidence in court.

A copy of the full job description is attached.

Person specification

To be eligible to apply, you need to:

• be a qualified practising solicitor or barrister holding a valid Practising Certificate for England and Wales.
• post qualification experience.
• have litigation experience in serious and complex crime.
• have experience of drafting high quality written analysis of complex legal or evidential issues.

It is desirable that you have the below experience but this is not required to apply:

• dealing with complex disclosure issues and international enquiries.
• extensive experience in criminal practice.

Qualifications

Legally Qualified: you must be a qualified practising solicitor or barrister and must hold a valid Practising Certificate for England and Wales.

Academic: Law degree, Common Professional Examination, Graduate Diploma in Law.

Professional: Legal Practice Course or Bar Professional Training Course and have completed the relevant pupillage and training contract (or have received full exemption from the relevant professional regulatory body, either the Solicitors Regulation Authority or the Bar Standards Board).

OR

CILEx: you must be a Fellow of CILEx, and in addition be a CILEx Advocate/Litigator holding all three advocacy certificates providing you with a ‘general qualification’ within the meaning of s.71 (3) (c) Courts and Legal Services Act 1990. Therefore, you must have a right of audience in relation to any class of proceedings in any part of the Senior Courts, or all proceedings in county courts or magistrates' courts in order to meet the requirements for a Crown Prosecutor specified by section 1 Prosecution of Offences Act 1985. Please note that if you do not hold the above CILEx qualification you are not eligible to apply for this vacancy. If you’re unsure whether you have qualified through CILEx please contact us to establish your eligibility for this role. Please note the qualification as stated is required for this role and equivalent qualifications will not be accepted.
If you are unsure about your eligibility please contact Benjamin.Ross-Russell@cps.gov.uk

Memberships

You must have a valid practising certificate for England and Wales or be eligible to obtain a valid practising certificate issued from either the Solicitors Regulation Authority or the Bar Standards Board.

If CILEx qualified, you must hold a ‘general qualification’ within the meaning of s.71 (3) (c) Courts and Legal Services Act 1990.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Making Effective Decisions

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £65,280, Crown Prosecution Service contributes £18,911 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Join the Crown Prosecution Service and find your purpose.

The Crown Prosecution Service is passionate about ensuring that we're a top performing organisation and a great place to work. We're a committed equal opportunities employer, creating a culture where you can bring your whole self to work, and individuality is truly appreciated.

This culture of inclusion is underpinned by our staff networks covering disability, faith and belief, LGBTQI+, race, social mobility alongside our mental health first aiders programme and wellbeing sessions.

The Crown Prosecution Service commits to offer its employees the following experience.

• You can do impactful, purposeful work that’s making a difference to your local communities.
• You are able to learn and grow, with access to the right opportunities and resources.
• We care about your wellbeing.
• We want you to feel valued, trusted and included.

We also offer the following range of benefits:

• Civil Service contributory pension of up to 28.9%
• 25 days’ leave, increasing to 30 days after 5 years
• £350 each year to spend on personal development
• lawyer training programme for all new prosecutors
• an extra privilege day to mark the King's birthday
• competitive maternity, paternity and parental leave
• flexible working including flexitime, and a family friendly approach to work
• Cycle2Work scheme, employee savings.

Diversity at the Crown Prosecution Service is about inclusion, embracing differences and ensuring our workforce truly reflects the communities we serve. We want you to feel that you belong and can thrive, whatever your background, identity or culture. As a Disability Confident employer, we're happy to support requests for reasonable adjustments and improve your recruitment experience. If you'd like any reasonable adjustments made to our recruitment process, let us know within your application or contact Benjamin.Ross-Russell@cps.gov.uk

We want to ensure our employees can thrive at work and home and offer a range of support to achieve a balance. This includes flexibility of working hours, flexibility to support caring responsibilities and a flexible approach to deployment. We offer a hybrid working policy. You must spend at least 40% of your contracted hours over a four-week period at court, in an office or another official workplace depending on business need and the kind of work you're doing. Travel within the Regional Wales Division/ International London South East Division wider group is required for collaboration, training and operational reasons.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Recruitment process

The recruitment process consists of an online application, interview and assessment. These are expected to take place on w/c 23 February 2026.

Your interview takes place online through Microsoft Teams. A member of our recruitment team will be in touch with guidance. If you have any queries about this, contact Benjamin.Ross-Russell@cps.gov.uk

You should keep these dates free or notify us if you're not available. We'll make every effort to accommodate your date preferences but we can't guarantee it.

CV

Please upload an up-to-date CV which should include:

• three years’ employment and/or academic history
• skills and experience
• achievements
• qualifications.

You need to attach your CV as an anonymised document of no more than two A4 pages, to provide the panel with an insight into your work history and experience. We ask that you do not provide personal details which could identify you like name, age, home address.

It’s your responsibility to provide the specified application information in the requested format to ensure that you’re considered for the post.

If you’re unable to cover three years through employment and/or academic history, you need to provide a character reference for clearance purposes. The reference will be required at onboarding if you’re offered the role.

Personal statement

You are asked to provide a 500 word personal statement to expand on your CV and provide insight into how you meet the essential criteria:

• qualified practising solicitor or barrister holding a valid Practising Certificate for England and Wales.
• post qualification experience.
• have litigation experience in serious and complex crime.
• have experience of drafting high quality written analysis of complex legal or evidential issues.

The CV and personal statement will be reviewed during the sift to assess the essential experience criteria. If you are successful at this stage, we'll invite you to interview and assessment.

Interview and assessment

We use behaviours to help us understand your experience, to see if you're a good fit for the role. You are assessed against grade 7 in the Civil Service success profiles behaviours framework. We are assessing four behaviours at interview and assessment stage.

1. Legal intellect- assessment
2. Making effective decisions - assessment and interview
3. Motivation- interview

We ask you to complete an assessment as part of the recruitment process for this role. We will provide details immediately before your interview.

Meet and Engage

We will be hosting Meet and Engage sessions, which will be in the form of a webchat where you can ask colleagues any questions you have about the role or recruitment. To register, please sign up below:

Tuesday 20 January at 1pm to primarily focus on role - https://meetandengage.com/amjigwxpn

Wednesday 21 January at 1pm to primarily focus on application process - https://meetandengage.com/amjigxurl

Other

This is a full-time post. We do consider requests for flexible, part-time working and job share, always considering the operational needs of the department.

Please note that the Crown Prosecution Service is unable to offer visa sponsorship. Therefore, if you require visa sponsorship to work in the UK, you will not meet the eligibility criteria for this role.

Clearance

If successful, you are required to securea Disclosure and Barring Service check (DBS) and Security Clearance (SC), for which you must have a current valid UK address. Candidates might be required to be Developed Vetting (DV) cleared at a later stage.

If successfully appointed, we ask you to complete a character enquiry form, nationality and immigration questionnaire and national security vetting form.

If you're a Crown Prosecution Service member of staff, you won’t need to do a Disclosure and Barring Service check as you already hold this clearance.

The job you’re applying for is covered by Article 3(a) of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975, consequently Section 4(2) of that Act doesn’t apply.You’re required to disclose all previous convictions and cautions including spent convictions. Failing to make a full declaration will result in withdrawing your offer of employment if our checks reveal convictions that haven’t been disclosed.

To be cleared to Security Clearance level, you have to be able to meet the residency requirement in the Cabinet Office guidance. For the Crown Prosecution Service they are:

• Security Clearance – three years within the last five years

If successful, you are required to secure Security Check (SC) clearance prior to starting in the role. There will also be a requirement once in post that you secure Developed Vetting (DV) clearance. If you are unsuccessful in securing DV clearance you will be restricted to work at SC clearance level which will exclude some top end NCA and HMRC casework. In some instances, it may also be necessary for there to be a move to a team where a lower level of clearance at SC or below is required.

Reserve list

If you're recommended by the selection panel but not appointed to the current vacancy, you’re put on a reserve list for 12 months. You may be offered another Specialist Prosecutor post in SEOCID if a vacancy comes up during this period. We may also approach candidates on the waiting list to fill other roles that require similar knowledge and experience.

Feedback

We only provide feedback if you attend an interview or assessment.

Fraud check

The Crown Prosecution Service provides a Fair Processing Notice to all new applicants after they’ve been successful at interview. These candidates are informed that, as one aspect of pre-employment screening, their personal details – name, National Insurance number and date of birth – are checked against the Internal Fraud Database. We won't employ anyone included on the database unless they can demonstrate exceptional circumstances.

The Strategic Resourcing team in the Crown Prosecution Service will, on behalf of the vacancy holder, inform applicants when they are refused employment because of their inclusion in the Internal Fraud Database.

Civil Service Commission

If you’re dissatisfied with the recruitment process and wish to make a complaint, please contact Strategic.Resourcing@cps.gov.uk with your concerns.

If you remain dissatisfied and wish to make a further complaint, please click on the following link to the Civil Service Commission complaints page Recruitment Complaints - Civil Service Commission

Civil Service Commission Recruitment Principles can be found at

https://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/recruitment/

Details of the Civil Service Nationality Rules are located at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationality-rules

Candidates are subject to UK immigration requirements. For the most up-to-date information on the requirements of working in the UK, please go to the UK Visas and Immigration website at https://www.gov.uk/browse/visas-immigration/work-visas

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : Benjamin Ross-Russell
• Email : Benjamin.Ross-Russell@cps.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : strategic.resourcing@cps.gov.uk

Attachments

CPS Terms and Conditions 2025 Opens in new window (docx, 258kB)SP day in the life Opens in new window (docx, 26kB)NEW CPS Personal Statement Guidance 2023 Opens in new window (docx, 269kB)Specialist Prosecutor SEOCID Opens in new window (docx, 23kB)