Making handwritten changes can cause problems when claiming for Pages of Prosecution Evidence

Handwritten amendments to support claims for Pages of Prosecution Evidence or prosecution witnesses in a case are causing problems.

This applies when handwritten amendments are made to Notices of Additional Evidence (NAE) or paginated documents lists.

The Crown Court Billing Teams have received a number of queries about this issue.

The general position is that if:

• the figures are all typed ? acceptable
• the figures are all handwritten and signed by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) officer ? acceptable
• some figures are typed and some written in ? problem
• the figures were typed and then there is a handwritten amendment ? problem

CPS caseworker

If all of the witness and PPE information on the document is typed, then the assessor can be confident that the details were completed by the appropriate CPS caseworker.

Similarly, if all of the figures were handwritten on to an NAE template that was signed by the CPS caseworker, then this will be acceptable.

In the problem situations we need to be able to see that the handwritten amendment was made by the CPS caseworker who signed the NAE.

This is virtually impossible to do with copy documents. If the assessor cannot see that the CPS caseworker amended the details, the amendments cannot be accepted as evidence.

Further information

Email: AGFS.Nottingham.LSC@legalservices.gsi.gov.uk or
Liverpool@legalservices.gsi.gov.uk