THE JUDGE in charge of York Crown Court has ordered the CPS to carry out an inquiry into why a York shopworker spent months on bail awaiting a crown court trial that will never take place.

Two judges and defence lawyers have tried since last winter to find out from the CPS exactly what the case against Luke Ashley Topham was.

Two weeks before his trial was due to begin the prosecution declared they didn't have sufficient evidence against him and dropped the case.

Mr Topham, 29, of Roche Avenue, York, was formally acquitted of a charge of theft, which he had denied.

“It is a very sorry tale,” said Judge Andrew Stubbs QC of the way the prosecution had conducted the case.

“If someone from the CPS could review it and provide an explanation to satisfy the court, what has gone so badly wrong in this case won’t go badly wrong again.”

He will leave York Crown Court this week after more than a year in charge and the report will be sent to his successor, Judge Sean Morris, who arrives on Monday.

Mr Topham made his first appearance before the crown court on February 15 when Judge Stubbs said the information provided by the CPS was so slight he could not carry out pre-trial management.

He adjourned the case until March 7, when Judge Simon Hickey, in Judge Stubbs’s words “tried to get hold of the case and clarify exactly what the prosecution case was”.

Judge Hickey was told there was "direct eye-witness evidence" against Mr Topham.

But in the months after the March 7 hearing there was a “catalogue of letters from the defence to the prosecution and the court asking what on earth was going on with this case,” Judge Stubbs told York Crown Court.

Rachael Landin, whom the CPS instructed in the case shortly before the final hearing, said she had not been given any explanations as to why the CPS had not complied with court orders to get the case ready for trial.

She said the barrister instructed before her, who would have prosecuted at the trial, had not been told about the court orders.