Sexual Offences: Private Rented Housing

(asked on 22nd July 2020) - View Source

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, pursuant to the Answer of 21 July 2020 to Question 75406 on Sexual Offences: Private Rented Housing, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the updated January 2019 CPS guidance on sex for rent arrangements and advertisements; and whether that guidance has resulted on prosecutions.


Answered by
Michael Ellis Portrait
Michael Ellis
This question was answered on 1st September 2020

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not maintain a central record of the number of prosecutions for sex for rent arrangements and advertisements under section 52 or 53 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. This information could only be obtained by an examination of individual CPS case files, which would incur disproportionate cost. Therefore, the CPS is unable to make an assessment of the effectiveness of updated CPS guidance on prosecutions of sex for rent arrangements and advertisements.

Prosecutors will consider all guidance available to them when applying the Code for Crown Prosecutors to determine whether there is enough evidence to charge and if it is in the public interest to bring a case to court.

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