On Friday the new Lord Chancellor announced the latest attempt to address prison overcrowding in England and Wales. It’s apparent these plans – known as ‘SDS40’ as they related to many Standard Determinate Sentence (SDS) prisoners being released from custody at the 40% point in their sentence – were in development by HMPPS under the previous Government, whose leadership almost certainly found them politically unacceptable. Certainly, they follow the same thinking of that organisation in seeking to solve the crisis of prison overcrowding by deepening the crisis of Probation workload.
HMPPS declined to engage in advance with Napo and the other Probation trade unions on the operational guidance and any communications to staff on the ‘SDS40’ scheme. It is unclear what actual relevant current Probation experience has informed this guidance, or whether it will be the latest in a line of HMPPS products divorced from our reality. This scheme will see thousands of prisoners released early, meaning Probation staff being required to significantly bring forward the process of release planning as well as then being required to deliver additional months of supervision to people released on licence. There will be periods of greater pressure around this scheme being introduced, and then extended, not just on Probation staff but also on the range of organisations in the community that we work with to support people who are leaving prison. Napo and the other trade unions will continue to raise the significant concerns we have over the capacity of Probation staff, and others, to cope with the additional work being proposed, in the same ways as we did over the discredited End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) scheme.
The proposals on hiring 1,000 new trainee probation officers to support these new early release measures are potentially as misleading as when previous Tory Ministers made similar claims. It’s not yet been made clear if these are part of existing PQiP Learner recruitments that are already in place for the near future or a genuine addition to those already planned. In any event, the shortest time that PQiP’s can qualify is 15 months, followed by a further 9-month period as a Newly Qualified Officer (NQO). For example, even if PQiPs started this month they would not qualify until October 2025, and complete their NQO period until July 2026. These proposals also ignore the abysmal attrition rates of the PQiP programme which have regularly seen around 25% of some cohorts leave their training – or be removed by the employer – prior to qualification.
Much of the thinking in HMPPS in recent years has been that, in defiance of all the evidence from their own experience and other organisations, that they can recruit their way out of a staff retention crisis. This has not worked to solve the problem so far and will not work now. Rather, the employer needs to spend money to improve the pay and conditions of existing employees rather than continuing with this delusion.
Napo’s current trade dispute is about pay and workloads because it’s clear that these are separate, but closely related, issues of the greatest concern to our members. This is why when members were balloted on the potential for some form of future action, 98% of the members who voted did so in support.
HMPPS needs to ensure it acts in line with the Civil Service Code and be honest with the new ministerial team about the dire situation in the Probation Service and the severity of the consequences of not addressing these. Napo, and the two other recognised trade unions, presented a detailed set of proposals to HMPPS on the most wide-ranging plans possible for the vast majority of the workforce several months ago – JTU 12/2024 PROBATION RESET TALKS 2024 | Napo. By contrast, ‘Probation Reset’ appears to have increased work for many staff, while producing little tangible positive effect for most. As it stands, such is the current state of the Probation Service facing the incoming extra work that the ‘SDS40’ scheme brings, it may be that HMPPS need to re-consider more drastic proposals that have previously been raised by Napo (in addition to those set out in the document above), such as the wider use of the Prioritisation Framework across more, if not all, Probation Regions for the remainder of this year.
The Lord Chancellor is right to say prisons are at the point of collapse, but completely incorrect if they do not quickly conclude that the Probation Service faces the same situation. While it’s possible that, in their first week in office, Ministers have received a significant amount of prison-centric advice and briefing from HMPPS senior management dominated by the Prison Service this approach needs to change. There exists a window of a matter of weeks in advance of the ‘SDS40’ scheme coming into force for this to happen.
To better demonstrate their appreciation of the horrendous state of the Probation Service, and their commitment to us to make real changes to our working conditions, the Lord Chancellor needs to immediately instruct HMPPS senior managers to reopen negotiations on the current pay deal in place in addition to implementing real workload relief to Probation staff. These issues must be progressed and resolved with the trade unions before the date in September when the first of thousands of prisoners will begin to be released early into our communities. Should the Lord Chancellor fail to do so then they will find it much harder to blame previous Governments for the impact on public safety of an even more overwhelmed Probation Service collapsing across England and Wales under the burden of ‘SDS40’.
18 responses
In light of the above, will NAPO now be balloting for strike action? I understand that after the preliminary ballot, NAPO were not going to progress with a full ballot. However, it is clear that the new government are just as willing to overload the service as their predecessors were. Surely the only response now is to ballot for strike action.
A great time to raise the profile of the difficulties while it is a hot topic?
It’s another hammer blow for community offender managers, once again, as with all recent changes it assumes that we have any capacity left to cover for the failings of the court systems, approved premises and the prison estate. Myself and my colleagues have operated at or above 200% capacity for well over 24 months at this point and the workload is once again increasing to ease pressures elsewhere.
A solution that I could see is of course to raise salaries significantly but what about retention bonuses? I have been in the service 24yrs and got £200 voucher for 20yrs which was an utter insult. I would have left by now if I could. We could also recruit back into the service retirees by offering financial incentives, bringing back the experience we need asap
To be honest I feel that we cant cope with volume of work that is coming our way on top of everything else. Do you know what the position of NAPO is on this? I feel that we are being taken completely for granted and just expected to get on with it. To quote NAPO enough is enough!! Our morale is at rock bottom and if they are relying on our good will they have used it all already
Some of our members are already off work with severe stress and anxiety , this is all due to the amount of work we are expected to do . The staff that are left in the workplace are really close to going off ill themselves due having to complete the extra work of the staff who are off. This has now go on for far to long and we need a plan to reduce this workload on our staff and provide them with decent pay, this will then help the probation service reduce the current attrition rate and start to rebuilding the probation service . These workloads cannot continue to increase we do not have anymore capacity left . So the prison problem is just going to spill out into its communities and put the public at a greater risk . I also have real concerns about the health and safety of our staff its not healthy working under this pressure and its certainly not safe.
You held a ballot and received 98% support and then backed away from taking further action?
Agreed, it’s time to strike!
Thanks for the update, its really interesting reading and I’m 100% with you.
This is all taking place as well as HDC + 4 years example offender sentenced to 14 years for Robbery CRD January 2025
on 16/07/2024 Con emailed approved HDC address for 18/07/2024 2 days notice of a possible release COM informed me this was 2ed one this week and new nothing about the HDC+4 scheme
Escalation of the pay dispute is the number one priority. In the same way the Government cannot build its way out of the prisons crisis, it cannot recruit its way out of the probation crisis. Even if they recruit an additional 1,000, we can barely train and retain the numbers we already have. Retention and support of existing staff, which includes significant work easements, is the only way out of the crisis.
Never has there been a better opportunity to increase NAPO membership.
A new Cohort of PQiP colleagues are due to start in Sept and whilst many of them will still be ignorant of what is in store for them, branches should be making sure that a NAPO member is available at their induction to give them advice and encouragement to join.
I suggested at conference in 2022 that it would be a good idea for the General Secretary produce a video that could be shown at regional PQiP inductions (as well as PSO induction sessions). This was met with approval given the reaction of the conference attendees. It is still something that I think would help considerably in giving a standardised presentation to prospective new members.
Please consider this Ian?
One HMPPS is a lie. Probation voices aren’t considered by government and it’s time to strike.
Again the pay review feels like Probation will be left behind as usual. What action will we start to take to make sure we are not the forgotten service yet again?
Taken from BBC news:
Decisions on pay rises for NHS staff, teachers, police and prison guards in England have to be taken by the end of this month, when the official public sector pay review, external process for 2024-25 must be concluded.
It’s disgusting that nothing is being done effectively and with speed about this. When prison officers don’t get what they deserve their union starts an immediate walk out. Probation unions just publish a speech, it’s wrong and more members would be gained through proportionate and fair action being taken.
Look at the action taken for VLO pay banding increase. Sorry but it’s disgusting, given the training and workload a probation officer has to do, why focus on VLOs and allow for complete devaluation of probation officers. You have to complete a level 6 qualification to be a probation officer, oh yes and don’t let me forget a probation officer has to see pretty much all their cases every week, plus attend the whole of a parole hearing not just complete and update and go (wasn’t that the reason for the re-banding) and it’s wondered why morale is so low!
Community probation is just thrown the most amount of work with no regard for the welfare of staff. Bonuses were paid to prison staff for ECSL why not community – that is shocking!
Pay needs to go up everyone should be moved up at least one band in the amount of pay received. And if a job requires a professional qualification of at least level 6 then the pay should differentiate from a role that does not require this.
In regards to work loads staff aren’t robots and can only be pushed so far with little regard for them.
I’m Napo’s Acting National Chair and just wanted to thank everyone who’s commented so far. We’ve had some technical issues with the page so I’m a bit delayed in posting this, sorry about that. I’ve set some time aside tomorrow (Thursday 18th July) to reply to the messages posted so far, as well as any between now and then, as best I can. Thanks again for the comments.
My concern besides the massive increase in workload when most POs are at breaking point, is the risk of re-offending, any blame will be put on Probation and it’s only a matter of time before someone who is released early, commits a serious offence and whilst violent offenders are not eligible for early release, there will still be an increased risk of SFOs occurring with us being blamed. Where is it going to end?
Great summary by Napo of the facts!
After 44 years of working in the public sector I have never experienced an employer like the MOJ. Unfortunately, despite for it being for its own benefit it does not give a toss about its operational employees who are ultimately responsible for delivering the outcomes .
We have to accept that our attempts of substantiated reasoning do not work with this employer so the only other option available is to take action and let the politics then take over .We hold the “Aces” if the employer wants to play those games.