A legal challenge to how rape is prosecuted has been dismissed by the court of appeal in what survivors say is a missed opportunity to put things right for women whose rape cases have been dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service. The lord chief justice, Lord Burnett, said there was no change “of legal substance” in CPS policy after guidance on prosecuting rape was altered, precipitating a 60% fall in rape prosecutions over four years to a record low. The case was brought by the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW), a group of women’s charities, and the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ), who said the decision was “deeply troubling” and have requested permission to appeal. Andrea Simon, the director of EVAW, said: “We are deeply disappointed at this outcome. However, we have no regrets about holding institutions accountable for the effective decriminalisation of rape. Thousands of rape victims continue to be let down by a broken criminal justice system.” Following the judgment, Max Hill QC, the director of public prosecutions, said: “The court of appeal has today handed down its judgment following detailed consideration of how the CPS prosecutes rape. They have dismissed the case, confirming that the CPS was neither irrational nor unlawful in its approach to updating guidance for prosecutors, and that there was no change of approach in the way the CPS prosecutes rape cases.” The case was crowdfunded with thousands of small donations, many from women whose rape cases did not make it to court. The claimants will now be expected to pay £75,000 in costs and a CPS spokesperson confirmed it would seek costs in order to fulfil its “responsibility to the taxpayer to recoup costs from legal action which we always argued was without merit”. Bonny Turner, whose rape case was dropped by the CPS, said: “I feel shocked, devastated and angry that the court has sided with the CPS and refused to uphold EVAW’s claim that the CPS have failed victims of rape … there have been demands for more convictions and tougher sentences for male violence against females, but none of that is achievable until we look upstream in the criminal justice system and prosecute more cases.” The claimants argued that the CPS had acted with “systemic illegality” and “raised the bar” for charging rape cases without consultation, which resulted in a sharp decline in prosecutions and discriminated against women and girls. However, the CPS denied the shift constituted a substantial change in practice and the court of appeal found the claimant’s case failed on every ground. Harriet Wistrich, the director of the CWJ, said: “We consider it deeply troubling that the judgment explicitly approves the decision by the then DPP, Alison Saunders, to change the messaging to crown prosecutors on the back of four high-profile acquittals and a falling conviction rate, when there was an acknowledged risk this would lead to an over-cautious approach. “Our evidence shows this is exactly what happened and as a consequence rapists that might otherwise have been convicted are walking free and there is a growing perception that rape has been decriminalised.” Separately an end-to-end government review of how rape is treated throughout the criminal justice system is taking place. The review was launched in March 2019 and is expected to report in the coming months after a series of delays. Turner added: “Whilst the government is signalling that they intend to increase rape prosecutions, surely this supports EVAW’s claim that the CPS have got things wrong in the last five years. Today’s judgment was a missed opportunity by the courts to put things right for all the victims of rape who have been robbed of justice in the last few years.” Hill added: “We must now rebuild public confidence that every allegation of rape or sexual assault will be fully investigated by the police and will go before the courts whenever the legal test is met.”