[2] The service is funded by the UK government's Ministry of Justice, which also publishes general advice about testifying in court [3] The Witness Service was first set up by Victim Support in the 1990s after research by the charity showed witnesses needed help to testify in court.
By 1996 there was a witness service in every Crown Court in England and Wales.
[4] Victim Support successfully ran the service for around twenty years before the Ministry of Justice awarded the £24m fixed-term contract to run the service to Citizens Advice in 2014.
[5] At the time, the Law Society Gazette reported that Citizens Advice Service did not get any additional funding to run the service.
[6] The NSPCC set up and ran a specialist service specifically for child witnesses, which Victim Support developed further in a pilot study with funding from the Ministry of Justice.