Consultation on our inspection framework and programmes 2020-2021 and 2021-2022
Under the Police and Criminal Justice Act 2006 we are required to consult each year on our inspection framework and programmes.
While the requirement only applies to consultation with ministers and other Chief Inspectors we have expanded this to include those we inspect and other interested parties.
At the time of writing, Covid-19 is expected to have a very significant impact on the delivery of both probation and youth justice services in 2020-2021 and potentially beyond. We are clear that operational delivery of essential services must be the priority and do not want inspection activity to burden services unnecessarily. We have agreed that, in the short term, we will postpone probation and/or youth offending service inspections – including work on our thematic as well as core local inspections. The proposals set out below, therefore, relate to the longer-term when we hope services will have returned to some semblance of normality.
In this paper we are consulting for the first time on our plans for the next two financial years. Given the long lead in time for our inspections, it is inevitable that we will have agreed the bulk of our work programme for the coming financial year. While we want to be transparent about those plans, we also want to give recipients a real opportunity to influence our priorities. We are therefore consulting on our work plans for both 2020-2021 and 2021-2022.
We would now very much welcome comments on our work programme as currently defined for 2020-2021, and on our prioritisation for 2021-2022, particularly on topics for thematics and research.