Napo’s GS, Ian Lawrence, shares his thoughts on the National Audit Office report into probation.
The National Audit Office report that has been issued today, represents one of the most damning that I have seen in my long career.
It totally vindicates everything that Napo has been saying about the current state of the Probation Service and the systemic failings by HMPPS leadership over a number of years, and the dereliction of duty shown by the previous government and, to some extent, the current administration in failing to get to grips with the myriad issues that are highlighted in the report.
To use a recent quote by the Prisons and Probation Minister Lord Timpson: “Probation does the heavy lifting in the Justice system,” and staff have worked heroically to try and deliver one initiative after another to try and keep the public safe, and help to turn lives around while facing the huge challenges that follow the unprecedented number of Prisoners coming back into our communities on early release schemes.
To do that work effectively, it’s obvious that the service requires more staff and vastly improved political support. It’s also clear that the senior management regime within HMPPS has been an abject failure, and hopefully the Public Accounts Committee will be asking serious questions about how a shortfall of several thousand staff in Sentence Management could go under the Radar as well as the unmanageable workloads that have been allowed to build up. We also expect to see this government deliver on its Manifesto commitment to review the future governance structure of the service with a view to retuning Probation back to the communities it serves and out of the Prison-Centric HMPPS.
More immediately, staff need to see a pay offer (some 10 months after the trade unions submitted a pay claim for 2025). The unacceptable delay after several weeks of negotiations last summer, smacks of disrespect and a continual assumption that the goodwill of staff can be relied upon yet again. Small wonder that Napo are making plans to again ballot our members for industrial action.
Napo demands a fair share of the allocated £700 million per year for the next 3 years from the Spending Review and that this must go directly into supporting front face practitioners and improved public safety, rather than being frittered away on grandiose AI projects. We also want to see an enquiry into the perennial failures of SERCO to deliver value to the taxpayer through its flawed electronic monitoring regime which as produced one failure after another.
Finally, Napo is grateful to the work undertaken by the NAO in terms of the need for transparency and public accountability.
6 responses
None of this is unexpected news . It’s been going on for years . Staff shortages , retention policies a failure due to excessive case loads and unrealistic expectations on probation staff. We go round and round in circles and report after report identify failings. Nothing seems to change !
It’s fair to say we stand at a critical juncture. With a history spanning more than a century, we have weathered waves of reform. This instability has undermined professional autonomy and blurred our purpose. Are we a social work agency, an extension of law enforcement, a welfare provider, or mechanism for managing community risk and easing custodial overcrowding?
If we are unable to develop a clear and credible identity, distinct from narratives around punishment, public safety, use of technology, cost-effectiveness, or custody alternatives, and to resist the urge to overpromise on risk management, public protection, and crime control, then we may continue to face the challenge of misrepresentation. Without a clearly defined identity, we remain vulnerable to external pressures, limiting our autonomy and effectiveness.
The future should lie in evidence-based reform, practitioner development, and adequate resourcing. Practitioners and managers must be empowered to lead and challenge from within, cultivating a workforce of champions who articulate our purpose with clarity and confidence. We must resist the urge to overpromise on crime control and risk management. Therefore, reframing public safety as a natural consequence of effective rehabilitation rather than an isolated goal.
Shaping Probation’s Identity:
https://www.probation-institute.org/news/shaping-probations-identity
This report does not do enough to expose the smoke and mirrors of probation reset. The hidden workload! Drug testing, the revolving door of 14 day FTR-accommodation referrals- failure to attend- rinse and repeat. Breaches, court updates, doing an ISP and 3 weeks later doing a reset oasys, then doing another ISP due to reoffending. It is relentless and it is not reflected on WMT.
The constant churn of new cases with zero time to use professional curiosity to ensure risk is captured or absorbed. Constant short sentences from custody with no time to plan for release between allocation and release.
WHEN WILL WE BE PAID PROPERLY, SUCH AN UTTER DISRESPECT TO ALL STAFF… claiming on the one hand to appreciate and value us, but not paying us adequately for our ‘hard work’. Over the past 10 years our pay has decreased due to the cost of living outstripping the real value of our money! It is a joke to leave us waiting 10 months, hoping this tactic will make us all say ‘yes’ to the first set of crumbs they offer us! We have to stand strong and determined and fight for what we are actually worth!
I see wonderful PQiPs coming into the service every 6 months, eager to help change people’s lives and support them in any way they can. Then the reality sets in and they realise that they will spend their careers writing about people instead of actually talking to them. They will write an in-depth OASys on our clients, taking up to ten hours in the process and wont actually see them for ten hours face to face before they are then shipped off to CRS etc. Our skill in in the room with the client face to face and that is what we need to get back to!
So many of the PQiPs leave before we even begin to asses them when the realise how computer based the job is – THIS IS NOT ADVERTISED!!!!!!!!!!
This saddens me beyond belief as I am a true believer in our work and have been for 21 years.
I have been in the service for over 20 years and I cannot believe we do not have a standardised, robust training provision for our admin staff. We do not have a training database, so new staff are just let loose on Ndelius with no proper training. It is left to the goodwill of existing case admin to train new staff. This is not their job and they certainly are not paid to do this.