Lawyers ordered to take the bus to court

Prosecutors have been forced to take public transport from their office to Kingston-upon-Thames courts.

The CPS at Kingston and Richmond, which has its office at Tolworth Tower, Surbiton, has stopped paying prosecutors' car-parking expenses, so they must take a 15-30-minute bus ride to and from the court at Kingston-upon-Thames, which is a couple of miles away.

A CPS lawyer said: "We originally thought the decision was an April Fool's Day joke. Lawyers will now be wasting time and resources waiting for buses. It is symptomatic of a cutback culture within the organisation that has seen morale among staff plummet."

CPS lawyers have long complained of heavy workloads because of the cutbacks.

However, a CPS spokesman said that civil service rules - not cutbacks - were behind the expenses decision.

He claimed Treasury rules stipulated that when suitable public transport was available, civil servants could not claim costs for parking on their expenses, and the court had not provided parking spaces.

The spokesman added that if staff could put forward a good enough case to establish that it would be a waste of time and resources to use public transport, then the move to reimburse parking fees would be seriously considered.