Guy Adams

It’s an affront to justice – how innocent people are spending decades extra in prison because the body tasked with re-examining their cases is run by… Britain’s grotesquely USELESS quango boss on £130,000 a year.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission operates from a ten-storey office block overlooking the gleaming, space-age facade of New Street station in central Birmingham.

It was opened in July 2022 by then government ‘efficiency’ minister Jacob Rees-Mogg under what he called ‘plans to create a leaner and more efficient public estate’ by relocating civil servants from London to the regions.

The Commission, whose 113 employees carry out the critical role of identifying potential miscarriages in our justice system, is one of 20 quangos and government departments that moved into the ultra-modern facility that year.

Ever since, staff have been able to enjoy what its website calls ‘comfortable breakout areas, a well-stocked communal kitchen, and great access to transport links and city life’.

That’s the theory, at least. But the reality is quite different. For on an average day, those swanky ‘breakout areas’ and kitchens are weirdly empty.

To blame is one highly controversial fact: Five years after Covid, the organisation, which is better known as the CCRC, continues to let employees work entirely from home.

Most staff show up to HQ just ‘once or twice a year, on average,’ it admits, saying the only ones required to venture into the building on a regular basis are members of the IT department, plus a presumably under-employed receptionist.

Even chief executive Karen Kneller, a lawyer who received a £130,000 salary from taxpayers last year, plus £34,000 towards her pension, rarely bothers to cross her expensive building’s threshold.