The director reports to the attorney general, who answers for the CPS in Parliament and makes appointments to the position, in the case of vacancy, on the recommendation of panels that include the Civil Service Commission.

As a result of the fallout, the Home Secretary William Harcourt set up a committee into "the present action and position of the Director of Public Prosecutions".

[6] The next few appointees were unimportant and uncontroversial, until Sir Charles Willie Matthews QC, a man Rozenberg describes as "the first real DPP".

The youngest man (and only solicitor) to be appointed DPP at that time,[8] Matthews modernised the office, updating the Prosecutions of Offences Regulations, introducing trunk dialling and using dictaphones to make up for the small number of shorthand typists.

He reorganised and modernised the department as a whole, and many of his modifications are still in place; for example, a provision in many new Acts of Parliament dealing with the criminal law that requires the consent of the DPP for a prosecution.