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An inspection of Probation Services – East Midlands region

Published:

Foreword (Back to top)

This was the first inspection of probation services in the East Midlands region under the new inspection programme which started in October 2023. Across the region, we met staff and leaders who were dedicated to providing and improving services to people on probation and victims across the East Midlands. However, as seen in all of our recent inspections, this was not translating into sufficient delivery of services to protect the public or support people on probation to change.

The region will be disappointed to be rated as ‘Inadequate’ overall.

There were some clear strengths in the region. Leaders had some insight into the key deficits of practice found within our case inspections. However, as with all other regions across England and Wales, they had been required to implement significant national policy changes at pace, meaning that some local delivery objectives had been deprioritised. This had contributed to a widespread sense of staff being overwhelmed and fatigued by change across the region.

Some significant activity had been undertaken within various boards and groups to support the improvement of work to keep other people safe. However, regional operational boards were often dealing with a large volume of activity, which meant that there was often insufficient steer or coordination of this critical work.

Robust workforce planning was having an impact on staffing levels, which were beginning to improve and stabilise. While there remained some gaps in practitioners in probation delivery units (PDUs), staff were starting to see more realistic workload levels. Vacancies remained within unpaid work, accredited programmes teams, and case administrator teams. This was impacting on the ability of the region to deliver high-quality services consistently.

Leaders were open to innovation, leading to some promising new quality assurance initiatives, with some early, but modest, success. These new approaches incorporated staff learning and development, and had the potential to provide the foundations on which real improvement to frontline practice can be achieved.

Too few people in the region were able to access sufficient support to resolve problems linked to their offending. The use of commissioned services was varied. Where they were most successful, PDUs had good working relationships with service providers and some effective co-location arrangements in offices. Not enough had been done by regional leaders to set expectations for practitioners around the delivery of interventions. Staff vacancies in interventions teams, alongside national changes to programmes, had led to some challenges in the delivery of crucial interventions.

Despite some insufficient assessment and planning work in unpaid work, there was some strong and promising delivery of services to support desistance from crime. Victim liaison officers (VLOs) were generally providing positive services for victims. These could have been improved further with better integration of the VLO role into sentence management and increasing victim input into multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA).

Martin Jones CBE

HM Chief Inspector of Probation

Ratings (Back to top)

Fieldwork started February 2025Score 4/24
Overall ratingInadequate

1. Organisational arrangements and activity

R 1.1 LeadershipRequires improvement
R 1.2 StaffingRequires improvement

2. Service delivery

R 2.1 Public protectionInadequate
R 2.2 DesistanceInadequate
R 2.3 Court workInadequate
R 2.4 Unpaid workInadequate
R 2.5 ResettlementInadequate
R 2.6 Victim workGood

Executive summary (Back to top)

Introduction

East Midlands is one of the 12 regions of the Probation Service in England and Wales. Along with the West Midlands region and several prisons, it forms part of the Midlands area of HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS).

The region is responsible for overseeing work delivered in six PDUs. These include Derby City; Derbyshire; Nottingham City; Nottinghamshire; Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland; and East and West Lincolnshire. Prior to the inspection of this region, we had inspected each PDU between February 2025 and April 2025.

At the time of the inspection announcement, 1,378 people were employed in the East Midlands probation region. Most of these were in probation officer (PO) and probation service officer (PSO) grades. All PDUs were experiencing shortages of practitioner and case administrator staff. On average, POs were holding a caseload of 34 and PSOs were carrying 41 each. According to the service workload management tool, workloads had reduced for staff in the previous 12 months. POs were assessed as holding 96 per cent of their overall capacity, with PSOs holding 75 per cent.

Regional leaders in East Midlands work across four police and crime commissioners and the associated police forces. The region has 13 prisons, 12 criminal courts, 33 local authorities, several local safeguarding children partnerships, and approved premises.

Methodology

We conducted fieldwork in each PDU across East Midlands between 24 February and 04 April 2025. We reviewed 330 cases, of which 216 were subject to a community sentence and 114 were subject to release on licence. From each of these cases, we collated data for our public protection and desistance ratings. We also conducted 285 interviews with probation practitioners. In addition, we reviewed 149 court reports and 104 cases subject to resettlement provision. We inspected 22 unpaid work cases sentenced in the week starting 09 September 2024. In total, 27 statutory victim cases were inspected from across the region where licences had started between 15 July and 26 September 2024.

1. Organisational arrangements and activity

R1.1 Leadership

There were deficits across all PDUs in the quality of the work to keep other people safe, and the delivery of services to support desistance from crime was not sufficient. Management information available to regional leaders through various dashboards meant that they understood many of the practice deficits we found in the cases inspected as part of our fieldwork. Significant national change, including the standard determinate sentence 40 early release scheme,[1] Probation Reset,[2] and large volumes of business change, meant that local objectives and improvement work was not always coordinated sufficiently or prioritised at the required pace by leaders. This included work to keep other people safe and to support people on probation to desist from offending.

The region had implemented a new quality assurance framework. ‘Quality Reset’ was a new initiative enabled by a temporary pause on the nationally mandated regional case assessment tool (RCAT). This incorporated staff learning and development actions following case audit, with a later reinspection of cases to ensure that learning was embedded. This was starting to demonstrate some modest improvements to the quality of work to keep other people safe.

PDUs were supported at a local level by commissioning and partnership managers, to improve access to the range of services within the region. This worked particularly well within the regional homeless prevention team, with effective relationships in PDUs and local authority housing teams. Commissioned Rehabilitative Services (CRS) referral and completion rates were being monitored, but this had not been used enough to address and improve the underlying reasons behind their overall underuse.

Leaders had improved approaches to engaging people on probation into service development since our last regional review. Several people who had been on probation in the region had been recruited into permanent employment. The strategy to engage people on probation had led to service changes. Numerous engagement forums were taking place regularly in PDUs, with feedback collected and used in some regional decision-making.

R1.2 Staffing

Workforce planning was robust and underpinned by some effective and accurate forecasting data. This was generating significant recruitment activity, both in the region and nationally. Regional staff were broadly representative of the ethnic diversity of the communities they served. The implementation of recommendations from an independent evaluation was further supporting the recruitment of people from diverse backgrounds.

Staffing levels were slowly stabilising, and this was having some positive impact on the ability of staff to manage their workload. Work to prioritise senior probation officer (SPO) recruitment had been successful, to the extent that the vast majority of managers were in post. The region had been successful in increasing numbers of probation staff within the prison estate.

Senior regional leadership roles, corporate services posts, and community integration teams were sufficiently resourced. Regional functions to support frontline delivery had also been recruited, including quality development teams and Serious Further Offence (SFO) teams. While there was significant demand on these teams, the region was setting priorities to ensure that their workloads were manageable.

Some key vacancies remained across interventions teams and unpaid work supervisors, with some gaps remaining at PO and PSO grades across the region. There were challenges in the recruitment and retention of case administrators, which placed additional pressure on frontline practice. This had led to continuous, but often unsuccessful, recruitment campaigns.

The region was successfully building an open and inclusive organisation. Regional staff were generally positive about their experiences of working for the East Midlands region and felt that there was a culture of openness. The introduction of trauma risk management (TRiM) to support the wellbeing of staff subject to significant incidents had recently been introduced, with a higher than anticipated number of referrals.

There were effective equality, diversity, and inclusion systems in place that were supporting cultural improvement and had given rise to some positive responses from staff in the HMPPS people survey. This was resulting in reasonable adjustments for staff, where they were required, and overseeing reward and recognition.

Completion rates for mandatory learning were being monitored by regional leaders, but more needed to be done to ensure that learning was being embedded.

The Quality Reset approach had led to a modest improvement in some risk management work. A second phase of this programme was planned, alongside a new management oversight framework and training for SPOs in regard to consistent quality assurance expectations. Challenges remained across PDUs, where leaders and SPOs having many responsibilities beyond their core role of team leadership. This, combined with unmanageable workloads, resulted in insufficient management oversight in most of the cases we inspected.

2. Service delivery

2.1 Public protection

Public protection work across all PDUs in the region was insufficient. Staff who had direct access to police and child safeguarding systems were not being used effectively. Too many assessments were being completed without reference to critical risk information. Where information was available, this was not always used effectively within risk assessment and planning activity. Management oversight and countersigning practice were not addressing the gaps within public protection work effectively.

There were too many outstanding Level 1 MAPPA reviews in some PDUs. Where reviews were taking place, they were not consistently coordinating effective partnership working with the police or obtaining the necessary input from VLOs.

The region had reduced the number of people on probation with a curfew requirement that remained untagged.

However, regional oversight of the work to keeping other people safe had not been coordinated sufficiently overall and was not driving the necessary improvement in frontline services.

2.2 Desistance

Learning, development, and quality improvement activity had led to some promising practice by practitioners when assessing and planning was personalised to people on probation, to identify and address offending-related factors. However, the delivery of services to people on probation to support desistance was insufficient in just over half of all the cases we inspected.

Interventions were not being delivered in a sequenced and timely way often enough to address offending-related factors. Despite the delivery of interventions being a regional priority, not enough was being done by leaders to support clear communication to staff in regard to prioritising the delivery of interventions and services.

Vacancies within the accredited programmes team had impacted on service delivery. People on probation with an accredited programme requirement were not consistently starting interventions within appropriate timescales. There were some barriers to effective partnership working between interventions and sentence management teams, including timely communication about the changing circumstances of people on probation.

Homeless prevention work coordinated by the region had supported some positive partnership working across several local authorities and commissioned services. Practitioners understood the significant implications of homelessness and had developed positive working relationships with the teams. Despite substantial challenges in the provision of accommodation, there were some promising outcomes delivered within the cases we inspected.

2.3 Court work

The quality of court work within the region varied but was mostly insufficient. This was underpinned by staffing and resource problems and the effectiveness of systems to obtain information from partner agencies. Where important information had been obtained, there were too many instances where this had not been integrated into pre-sentence advice.

More positive outcomes were seen in some courts where effective arrangements had been developed by court teams and staff who had direct access to partnership systems. In some cases, there were arrangements to expedite court requests to support speedier sentencing.

The region understood that court work was not effective enough, and had a dedicated strategic lead, a court improvement board, and court action plan in place. While this had supported improvement in the quality of enforcement and breaches, more work was needed to improve pre-sentence advice for sentencers.

The region was missing some opportunities to influence sentencing decisions, especially for priority cohorts and the management of demand, particularly in relation to appropriate sentencing to unpaid work hours. In part, this was due to court productivity and the proportion of cases sentenced without reports.

2.4 Unpaid work

There were some significant strengths within some elements of unpaid work delivery. Improvements had also been made to induction processes, leading to clear information being given to the person on probation, with a consistent application of the rules in nearly all the cases we inspected. Placements offered by the region were generally of good quality, with opportunities to pay back to local communities.

Unpaid work delivery maximised rehabilitative opportunities and supported desistance in 91 per cent of cases inspected. However, the delivery model was often hindering effective and personalised assessment and planning work. Practitioners were often undertaking assessments without having had face-to-face contact with the people on probation. Many of the deficits related to gaps in risk of harm information and a lack of analysis of how the diversity needs of people on probation may have impacted their ability to complete unpaid work hours.

Deficits in assessment and planning work had led to challenges for staff managing placements to keeping other people safe. However, it was promising that unpaid work staff were considering the diversity needs of the person on probation and considered their health and safety and vulnerability needs.

2.5 Resettlement

While some probation staff vacancies in prisons remained, the region had successfully increased staffing levels within Offender Management in Custody (OMiC) and pre-release teams. However, resettlement work was not leading to sufficient pre-release planning in many of the cases we inspected.

Some challenges remained in regard to the difference in the quality of work between prison and probation staff completing assessments. Given the relatively small number of quality development officers (QDOs) in the region, prison teams had not been in scope for additional quality assurance support. Regional leaders recognised that quality assurance processes in prison teams needed to be more robust.

Regional leaders had established good links with their counterparts in local prisons and other agencies, with workforce planning and some commissioning activity being coordinated. Some problems remained, including limited opportunities for community staff to have proportionate pre-release contact with prisoners, which was compounded by the high prison population. Insufficient conferencing facilities hindered pre-release planning, with only 45 per cent of prisoners having sufficient contact with their community offender manager before their release.

2.6 Victim work

Victims of serious sexual and violent offending were receiving strong support from the victim liaison unit. In most of the cases we inspected, victims were receiving timely contact from VLOs. Sufficient information was shared with victims to allow them to make an informed choice about whether to participate in the scheme.

Long-standing challenges in the quality and timeliness of referrals from police witness care units into the victim liaison unit had not been resolved, despite ongoing attempts to do so. Mitigations put in place by the team meant that staff were proactive in following up some late referrals. Information about the protected characteristics and personal circumstances of victims was often missing, which meant that VLOs could not always personalise their initial contact to the needs of victims.

Where victims had participated in the scheme, contact with the VLO was appropriate, so they were able to contribute their views to inform decisions about a prisoner’s release. This had led to restrictive conditions for the released prisoner in all inspected cases, with the victim appropriately informed.

While VLOs were proactive in sharing relevant information with sentence management teams, they were not consistently kept up to date with appropriate and timely information about the management of the person on probation by probation practitioners across sentence management teams. Further work was needed to ensure that VLOs were engaged in MAPPA, specifically within Level 1 reviews.

Recommendations (Back to top)

As a result of our inspection findings, we have made a number of recommendations that we believe, if implemented, will have a positive impact on the quality of probation services.

East Midlands Probation region should:

  1. improve the quality of court reports to inform sentencing, ensuring that domestic abuse and safeguarding information is used effectively
  2. work with sentencers to ensure that advice from probation court staff is obtained pre-sentence
  3. ensure that all MAPPA Level 1 cases have sufficient management oversight and that there is an appropriate focus on information exchange with other agencies to inform risk assessment and review
  4. improve the quality of work to assess, plan for, manage, and review risk of harm
  5. ensure that learning delivered by the region is embedded by managers and practitioners
  6. ensure that robust quality assurance of sentence management is in place, with appropriate manager workloads to deliver this effectively
  7. review referral rates and use of CRS to ensure that they are meeting the needs of people on probation.

HMPPS should:

  1. ensure that sufficient resources are allocated to the region to enable effective and timely SFO reviews
  2. ensure that SPOs have sufficient capacity and resource to undertake effective management oversight of casework
  3. evaluate the effectiveness of training material delivered to practitioners in relation to keeping people safe, and provide reporting mechanisms for regions to identify concerns about deficits in practitioner skills and knowledge
  4. delegate greater authority to regional probation directors in relation to spending, including on commissioned services and contract management, and streamline commercial processes.

Background (Back to top)

East Midlands is one of the 12 regions of the Probation Service in England and Wales. Along with West Midlands regions and several prisons, it forms parts of the Midlands area of HMPPS. Some 4,188,925 people live in the East Midlands. [3]

The region employs 1,378 people and oversees six PDUs. These include Derby City; Derbyshire; Nottingham City; Nottinghamshire; Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland; and East and West Lincolnshire. The regional management arrangements oversee several teams, including unpaid work, accredited programmes, and victim liaison services.

At the time of announcing the inspection, the region managed an overall caseload of 10,437 people in the community, of which 6,803 were serving community sentences and the remainder were on licence from prison.

The region works across the boundaries of four Police and Crime Commissioners and 33 local authorities. There are eight magistrates’ courts, four Crown Courts, and 13 prisons across the East Midlands. A further prison is due to open in the region in 2027, which means that further PO and SPO recruitment will be needed.

Several CRS were available in the region. Providers included Nacro for accommodation; Changing Lives, Derby Women’s Work, Lincolnshire Action Trust, and Nottingham Women’s Centre for women’s services; Ingeus for finance, benefit, and debt; and Ingeus and The Forward Trust for personal wellbeing. Services for drug and alcohol support were funded in partnership with local authorities.

At the time of the inspection announcement, all PDUs in the region were categorised as being ‘green’ on the prioritisation framework. However, at the time when the PDU case inspection cohorts were selected, two PDUs were categorised as being ‘amber’, with one identified as ‘red’. This reflected the relative staffing deficits that each PDU was facing.[4]

1. Organisational arrangements and activity (Back to top)

R 1.1. LeadershipRating
Regional leadership drives the delivery of a high-quality, personalised, and responsive service for all people on probation.Requires improvement

Strengths:

  • The regional leadership team was experienced, committed, and determined to support the needs of the region. Against a backdrop of significant national changes, the Regional Probation Director had gained authorisation to depart from some national policy guidance. This included implementing a new regional approach to quality assurance. As a result, some gradual improvement had been made to public protection work against regional self-evaluation, although this was still not enough. Leaders had decided to deprioritise elements of the national home visit policy framework. There was some promising, although still inconsistent, use of home visits to support the management of risk of harm.
  • A comprehensive governance structure was in place that broadly focused on regional delivery priorities. There were appropriate lines of accountability and cross-representation with other relevant boards. While the region recognised the need to streamline these arrangements to maximise effectiveness, it was enabling some promising practice across some elements of our case inspection standards. This included some aspects of engagement, assessment, and planning practice to support people to stop offending.
  • Regional leaders were aware of the deficits within frontline public protection practice. This was driving significant activity from leaders and across strategic leadership boards. Learning from some high-profile SFOs had led to the region providing practitioner staff within local children’s services teams to support risk analysis. This was resulting in more promising practice in relation to protecting the public within some court teams. Where this was working well, PSO staff in children’s services teams were providing sufficient information on risk to report authors, who were often using this information effectively in advice to court.
  • Accountability processes were in place to track the levels of quantitative information exchange between probation, police, and children’s services. The public protection board was tracking the improvement of Violent and Sex Offender Register (ViSOR) vetting and access for frontline staff, although substantially more work was needed. The learning and development team had prioritised domestic abuse and child safeguarding training, in addition to Skills for Effective Engagement and Development 2 (SEEDS2), to support reflective practice.
  • Silver and bronze management meetings had been implemented to deliver change at pace and with greater regional oversight. For example, they were overseeing action which was leading to a modest reduction in the backlog of uncompleted unpaid work cases, from 26 per cent one year earlier to 21 per cent at the point of inspection. The process also supported the reduction of individuals subject to electronic monitoring who remained untagged to relatively low numbers.
  • Regional links with organisations on strategic boards were strong, including the regional Local Criminal Justice and Reducing Reoffending Boards, Offices of the Police and Crime Commissioners, and the Youth Justice Board. Established relationships with the regional homelessness prevention teams were supporting PDUs to navigate complex local authority housing systems, with some positive accommodation outcomes achieved in the cases we inspected. Where this worked particularly well, PDUs were engaged in initiatives with local partners, such as the multi-agency rough sleeping hub in Derby City.
  • Regional data collection and access to management information, including performance information, caseload data, and workforce planning, were a particular strength. The data was presented in easily accessible and user-friendly dashboards and was used by leaders to inform regional activity across all workstreams.
  • The regional commissioning plan and contract management and commissioning board was effective and ensured appropriate governance of contracts with partnership agencies. The regional commissioning team was basing its decisions about acquiring new providers based on the available data and was encouraging PDUs to develop initiatives based on local priorities. Where this worked well, this led to innovation, including a local stalking initiative being introduced in Nottinghamshire PDU.
  • The leadership of unpaid work was strong. Leaders were communicating objectives clearly, in a way that was well understood, and supporting dedicated staff at all grades. In the casework we inspected, almost all cases maximised rehabilitative opportunities to support desistance from offending. Approaches to the safe delivery implementing unpaid work requirements were promising.
  • Arrangements for equality, diversity, and inclusion in the region were strong and comprehensive. The work of the regional equality lead was supported by diversity champions and the equality board, with a detailed delivery plan. This was driving some positive staff engagement activity, including training and Let’s Talk events, which were open discussion sessions for equality, diversity, and inclusion matters. The regional equity assurance council was attended by a senior regional leader and was using data and staff feedback to influence regional decisions. In the people survey, 85 per cent of staff indicated that they were treated with respect by colleagues, and 73 per cent said that the organisation respected individual differences.
  • Regional leaders were committed to improving the quality of work delivered by practitioners with people on probation. An initiative called Quality Reset was delivered by QDOs, and incorporated case audit and inspection with learning and development activity. Follow-up assurance activity was introduced to ensure that learning had been embedded. All relevant sentence management practitioners had participated in the programme. Internal evaluation work had indicated a slight increase in the quality of work to keep other people safe as a result of Quality Reset.
  • Approaches to engaging people on probation had developed and matured across the East Midlands region since the previous inspection. The region had several peer mentor coordinators and lived experience mentors available to deploy. There were systems to obtain feedback and these were being used to inform changes. The region had used feedback from people on probation across corporate functions to offer support from peer mentors to support other such individuals who were engaging with the complaints process. Some mentors were also deployed to support the engagement of people on probation.
  • Important policy decisions were sometimes informed by analysis. For example, research had been commissioned to evaluate the management of young adult men in Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland PDU. An external evaluation had been undertaken to understand the experiences of ethnic minority candidates within the recruitment process, leading to changes to increase diversity within panels. This had resulted in increases in staff appointed from ethnic minority backgrounds within some business units.

Areas for improvement:

  • Work by regional leaders to improve how probation practitioners were managing risk of harm was insufficiently coordinated and not having enough impact. To some extent, significant national change programmes arising from the prison and probation capacity crisis had reduced regional capacity to deliver fully against local delivery priorities, including public protection work.
  • Services intended to help people on probation to stop offending were inconsistent. In part, this was related to national changes to accredited programme delivery. Some PDUs had been authorised to de-prioritise support while they were operating under the prioritisation framework exceptional delivery model. For some practitioners, regional leaders had not done enough to reduce the cognitive overload associated with changing national policies, or to provide clarity for frontline practitioners in regard to the delivery of interventions to reduce reoffending.
  • Leaders were not using all the available in-depth management information available to them to hold PDU heads to account for the underlying factors relating to insufficient practice. Performance and quality teams held some detailed information regarding deficits in the quality of public protection work, and community integration teams had identified inconsistent approaches to some stakeholder engagement within PDUs. However, regional leaders did not always use this to full effect. As a result, there was inconsistency in the quality of work delivered across PDUs. In Derby City PDU, for example, the work to help people desist from crime was mostly effective, but other PDUs did not have similarly strong relationships with partners, or effective co-location arrangements.
  • Regional oversight of MAPPA at Level 1 was ineffective. There were too many overdue meetings across the region and not enough contributions from VLOs, and the coordination of partnerships involved in public protection work was inconsistent. The consequence of this was that opportunities to consider victim perspectives and changes in their circumstances were sometimes being missed.
  • Relationships with police forces and children’s services departments across the region had been delegated to PDU heads to manage locally, with varying degrees of success. The regional commitment to co-locate PSOs in children’s services teams, while innovative, was not achieving its full potential. These staff were managed through PDUs, with no current regional steer in their roles to support necessary improvements in practice. We saw examples where frontline staff were attempting to navigate and understand some complex information sharing agreements with senior partnership leaders. However, there was evidence that these roles were supporting some wider partnership safeguarding activity.
  • CRS were underused across the region, which meant that people on probation who would have benefited from their services were not always accessing them. Leaders were planning to review referral and engagement practices, but regional leaders should have done more to use the information already available to them to support more effective use of CRS. This could have identified PDUs with more promising approaches and driven improvements in the cases we inspected.
  • The regional approach to managing people on probation after their supervision had been suspended under the Probation Reset initiative was not functioning well. Approximately 90 per cent of all eligible cases had been flagged on information and communications technology systems but only around half of these cases had been moved into Probation Reset hub teams, where specialist practitioners had received training and oversight to manage cases where supervision had been suspended and to provide the necessary reactive management. Where cases had been subject to Probation Reset within eight weeks of starting their supervision, there was less effective work to support desistance and to keep other people safe. There was limited evidence that interventions were being ‘front-loaded’ as intended, to ensure that all necessary work had been completed before suspension.
R 1.2 StaffingRating
Staff are enabled to deliver a high-quality, personalised, and responsive service for all people on probation.Requires improvement

Strengths:

  • Workforce planning was informed by various reliable sources of data and forecasting. Local workforce planning boards were able to escalate staff concerns into the regional resource planning committee. The regional leadership team had appropriate oversight of current and future workforce needs against future campaigns, including national Professional Qualification in Probation (PQIP) recruitment pipelines. This had led to a steadily increasing number of staff in post against target staffing figures within some regional functions. This was starting to have some impact, with 44 out of 69 respondents to the staff survey indicating that their workload was manageable.
  • Regional leadership posts, contract and partnership managers, and victim liaison unit posts were fully staffed against target staffing figures. Vacancies that had existed within QDO and SFO teams had been successfully addressed.
  • Even where fully staffed, the capacity of some regional teams was not always sufficient to meet demand. However, teams were being deployed according to regional priorities, to support areas where need was greatest. The relatively small QDO team was supporting PDU sentence management teams and MAPPA thresholding work. There had been a focus on deploying these resources to build sustainability and consistency across the middle management grade in rolling out further regional assurance activity.
  • The region had recruited an additional head of operations on a temporary basis. The additional capacity had enabled the region to deliver some significant change programmes successfully, allowing a greater capacity for leadership oversight of relevant workstreams. Although there was more work to do, this was having some impact on raising the profile of new initiatives, such as Quality Reset. Leadership capacity supported frontline delivery, with promising assessment and planning work for desistance and engagement work across most PDUs.
  • Almost all PO and SPO posts in prisons across the East Midlands region were occupied. This was particularly impressive, given the number and size of prisons in the region. Leaders had increased staffing in HMP Fosse Way incrementally, to balance the need for POs in prison against critical resourcing gaps within community probation teams. This approach was supported by the effective working relationship between the Regional Probation Director and the Prison Group Director, to ensure that sufficient resources, knowledge, skills, and experiences were matched across prison and probation offender management teams.
  • There was a clear commitment to strengthening capacity at middle manager grade. Recruitment for SPOs had been prioritised to support a relatively inexperienced workforce, with 107 per cent of managers in post against target staffing figures. SEEDS2 was identified as a regional priority to support reflective practice. In total, 28 SPOs had completed the new “Learning and Managing as an SPO programme”, with 29 progressing through the programme at the time of the inspection. The introduction of the second phase of Quality Reset was combined with new national management oversight guidelines. Training events were coordinated by QDOs, to provide benchmarking opportunities to drive sustainable approaches to quality assurance.

Areas for improvement:

  • Critical staffing levels remained at unpaid work supervisor and accredited programme facilitator grades, despite multiple national recruitment campaigns. This was having a direct impact for people on probation. In relevant cases we inspected, programmes were often not starting within appropriate timescales. People on probation were not consistently offered appropriate times and locations, and there were barriers to effective partnership working between some sentence management and interventions teams.
  • Sickness levels remained high across PSO and PO staff, and this had impacted on team resilience. Senior leaders had recognised that too many days of sickness were lost due to stress at work. The region had access to a range of staff support services, including staff support groups, engagement forums, and the recently introduced stress risk assessment framework. Caseloads had also started to reduce for some practitioners, based on increased staffing numbers and the implementation of Probation Reset policy, but this was not yet having a positive impact. The average number of working days lost for POs remained high, at 16 days per annum; for PSOs, this had increased from 10 to 14 days over the previous 12 months.
  • Too few practitioners were available to provide pre-sentence advice in all court teams across the region. This was affecting the ability of court teams to write reports on many defendants being sentenced, including for priority cohorts, such as women and people from ethnically diverse backgrounds. Court teams were having to cope with vacancy rates of 30 per cent, which was partly because the national target staffing expectation had increased. Most court work was insufficient across the region, but there were more promising outcomes for courts based within Derbyshire and Derby City.
  • Staff promotions and development were not fully understood by regional leaders, except for PSO progression, which was being tracked. Only 30 out of 69 staff responding to the survey indicated that their potential had been identified and developed. More published data on promotion and development was needed to increase staff confidence that opportunities were equitable across the region.
  • Management oversight was insufficient, ineffective, or absent within most of the cases we inspected. SPOs had many responsibilities beyond their core role of team leadership, and included responsibilities such as stakeholder management, human resources processes, complaints, and, in some cases, health and safety responsibilities. This meant that direct oversight of practice could not be prioritised consistently, often to the detriment of the work to keep other people safe.
  • Training was not yet providing the necessary skills, knowledge, and experience for staff to support the required improvements to practice. Overall, 75 per cent of staff responding to our survey thought that the region promoted a culture of learning and continuous improvement, with 78 per cent indicating that they received supervision that enhanced the quality of their work. However, this was not demonstrated within the cases we inspected. A regional training needs analysis had informed the learning and development strategy, in addition to deploying resources in accordance with the schedule of regional training. Regional priorities included further child safeguarding and domestic abuse training.
  • Not all practitioners had completed mandatory training, often as a result of staff turnover. However, where training was completed, there was limited evidence that it was leading to more sufficient practice, particularly in relation to work intended to protect the public from harm. In total, 65 per cent of all eligible staff had completed domestic abuse training and 72 per cent had completed child safeguarding training. Protected learning days for practitioners were well intended but implemented inconsistently across the region and did not always support consistent learning.

Diversity and inclusion (Back to top)

Strengths:

  • Arrangements for equality, diversity, and inclusion in the region were strong and comprehensive. The work of the regional equality lead was supported by diversity champions and the equality board, with a detailed delivery plan. This was driving activity to deliver training and Let’s Talk events and was sufficiently flexible to provide platforms to discuss and support staff impacted by current affairs relating to equality and diversity. In the people survey, 85 per cent of staff indicated that they were treated with respect by colleagues, and 73 per cent said that the organisation respected individual differences
  • There was active use of diversity information to inform service planning. Where able to do so, the region had commissioned smaller contracts specific to individual needs within PDUs, including services to support mental and physical health, resettlement, and women.
  • While the staffing demographics of PDUs was not always representative of the communities in which they served, the region had commissioned an external review to understand the experiences and outcomes for candidates from a minority ethnic background. The region was committed to ensuring that panels were diverse, and that appropriate training was available for interviewers. This had supported an increase in ethnically diverse PO staff in Nottingham City from 23 per cent to 30 per cent, compared with 35 per cent of their caseload.
  • In support of regional priorities to improve services for young adults and care leavers, there was a commitment to seconding qualified staff into all youth offending teams. Some teams, such as the young adults team in Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland, had introduced concentrator models[5]. An evaluation into the effectiveness of this approach was being undertaken, to inform decisions for the further roll-out of this approach.
  • Approaches to engaging people on probation had matured since the previous inspection, with the region contributing to national approaches. Over 35 forums had been coordinated across PDUs, with coordination from peer mentors and lived experience representatives. This included input to all new PSOs and PQIPs entering the service. There was a footprint from people on probation across most business units across the region. This ranged from providing contributions to commissioning teams, corporate services, and directly supported some people on probation to increase their engagement with unpaid work projects.
  • The region ring-fenced relevant roles to support rehabilitation for those with lived experience. Eight individuals had been recruited through the Going Forward to Employment initiative, with the region in the process of taking on an additional four via a new probation employment pathway for those with lived experience.

Areas for improvement:

  • Changes to regional equality information recording meant that the number of individuals within the East Midlands caseload with a declared disability was not understood consistently.
  • The region had access to an equality dashboard. However, this was not tracking outcomes for all those individuals within regional priority cohorts and not used to increase the volume of pre-sentence advice in courts for defendants with protected characteristics.
  • Within some PDUs, we saw cohorts of people on probation from an ethnic minority background, but limited, if any, services commissioned by the Probation Service to meet their specific needs. National services had been commissioned, such as the English Football League mentoring provision and BAC-In for specialist substance misuse support. However, these were often underused.
  • VLO’s consistently received insufficient detail about the protected characteristics and personal circumstances of victims from police witness care units across the region. This meant that initial contact with victims was not always meeting individual need. The victim liaison team was working hard to track and improve performance with police partners at an operational level, but escalations to the public protection board had not led to effective resolution.

2. Service delivery (Back to top)

R 2.1. Public ProtectionRating
High-quality, personalised, and responsive services are delivered to protect the public.Inadequate

Our rating [6] for public protection is based on the percentage of cases we inspected being judged satisfactory against four key questions and is driven by the lowest score:

Key questionPercentage ‘Yes’
Does assessment focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe?27%
Does planning focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe?43%
Does the implementation and delivery of services effectively support the safety of other people?32%
Does reviewing focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe?33%
  • Work to keep other people safe was consistently not sufficient across all the cases we inspected. Information sharing agreements were in place and staff with dedicated roles supported some effective information sharing. While improvements were still needed, sufficient domestic abuse information was available and of a sufficient standard in 247 out of 330 cases inspected.
  • Child safeguarding information exchange was less positive, with only 151 out of 319 relevant cases having sufficient risk information available for assessments. The lack of regional steer and oversight of the probation practitioner role within local multi-agency safeguarding hubs meant that insufficient action was being taken when there were delays in receiving information or when follow-up enquiries were needed.
  • In total, only 149 out of 214 assessments related to domestic abuse and 100 out of 156 related to child safeguarding used the intelligence received effectively. In too many cases, practitioners were not consistently using professional curiosity to follow up when insufficient information was received or there were gaps in information.
  • Practitioners were generally making reasonable decisions about risk classifications. However, in too many cases there was an insufficient analysis of risk related to actual or potential victims within initial assessments. This meant that we saw insufficient assessments, leading to plans that were not setting out the necessary constructive and/or restrictive interventions to manage risk of harm often enough.
  • The implementation of sentences was generally not sufficient to keep people safe. There was insufficient attention given to protecting actual or potential victims in 213 out of a total of 312 cases. Regional Level 1 MAPPA processes were not consistently supporting effective partnership working, with practice in 30 out of the 71 relevant cases we inspected being insufficient.
  • Regional approaches to undertaking home visits to support the management of risk were leading to improvements. Out of the 272 relevant cases that should have received a home visit, 173 had been completed across the region.
R 2.2. DesistanceRating
High-quality, personalised, and responsive services are delivered to promote desistance.Inadequate

Our rating[7] for desistance is based on the percentage of cases we inspected being judged satisfactory against four key questions and is driven by the lowest score:

Key questionPercentage ‘Yes’
Does assessment focus sufficiently on the factors linked to offending and desistance?67%
Does planning focus sufficiently on reducing reoffending and supporting desistance?72%
Does the implementation and delivery of services effectively support desistance?49%
Does reviewing focus sufficiently on supporting desistance?52%
  • Assessments were generally focusing on analysing factors related to offending, with some promising practice in drawing sufficiently on available sources of information. This had had a positive impact, with 73 per cent of subsequent plans reflecting and prioritising the most critical offending-related factors. Assessment and planning of desistance was generally the most sufficient area of practice within casework.
  • People on probation were not consistently receiving sufficient support in relation to the problems that were related to their offending. Due to staffing and workload pressures within PDUs, the delivery of some interventions had been deprioritised in some cases. Practitioners were not always delivering available toolkits and there were low referral rates to structured interventions. Alternative, practitioner-led interventions were not proving consistently effective in addressing the range of offending-related needs.
  • There was not enough delivery of services to support people on probation into education, training, or employment; finance, benefit, and debt; and drug and alcohol misuse intervention was not sufficiently meeting the needs of people on probation. Where the delivery of services was consistently more sufficient, this was often underpinned by more effective operational and strategic relationships with providers within PDUs. This was evident with some effective co-location arrangements in Derby City PDU, and in some more consistent outcomes for women on probation across the region.
  • Vacancies within programme facilitator grades were having an impact on the quality and timeliness of accredited programme delivery. In relevant cases we inspected, programmes were often not starting within appropriate timescales. People on probation were not consistently offered appropriate times and locations, and there were barriers to effective partnership working between sentence management and interventions teams.
  • The completion rate for accredited programmes was 77 per cent for those convicted of a sexual offence. However, just over half of those convicted of all other types of offending had completed an accredited programme, which was not high enough. Under the accredited programme prioritisation framework adopted by the region, all individuals with a programme requirement pending should have received an intervention from their probation practitioner to address their needs before the end of their supervision.
  • There had been some increases in drug rehabilitation requirements and alcohol rehabilitation requirements, supported by regional health and justice coordinators. However, there remained an inconsistency to the quality of delivery of these services across the region. Improved operational relationships between PDUs and providers could have had a significant impact on improving the delivery of these services.
R 2.3. Court workRating
The pre-sentence information and advice provided to court supports its decision-making.Inadequate

Our rating[8] for court work is based on the percentage of cases we inspected being judged satisfactory against one key question:

Key questionPercentage ‘Yes’
Is the pre-sentence information and advice provided to court sufficiently analytical and personalised to the individual, supporting the court’s decision-making?40%
  • Advice to court was broadly considering some factors related to risk of harm, especially where this harm was related to the index offence. However, there were significant local variations in the quality of pre-sentence information and advice within courts across the East Midlands. Some of this was underpinned by staffing and resource challenges, as well as the effectiveness of systems to obtain key information on domestic abuse and child safeguarding from partners.
  • There were effective arrangements to expedite responses to enquiries made by court staff in Derbyshire and Derby City. This resulted in positive information exchange, with information and advice to these courts broadly drawing sufficiently on domestic abuse and child safeguarding information. However, this was not replicated sufficiently across other courts in the region and was a significant factor driving an overall ‘Inadequate’ rating for court work.
  • Staff were meaningfully engaging defendants during the preparation of their reports. This engagement led to staff considering defendants’ diversity needs and personal circumstances in 80 per cent of the reports we inspected. Appropriate proposals were made to the court in 123 out of 142 relevant cases inspected.
  • Some approaches to learning and development activity were embedding across the region. Court staff were generally considering factors related to the likelihood of reoffending, which was in line with the promising approaches to assessment and planning for desistance within the cases we inspected.
  • The region had missed some opportunities to support and influence sentencing decisions, especially for priority cohort defendants such as those with protected characteristics. The work of the court improvement board was driving some activity to address this, which included daily meetings with HM Courts and Tribunals Service and legal representatives in some court teams to meet and prioritise fluctuating demand.
R 2.4. Unpaid workRating
Unpaid work is delivered safely and effectively, engaging the person on probation in line with the expectations of the court.Inadequate

Our rating[9] for unpaid work is based on the percentage of cases we inspected being judged satisfactory against four key questions and is driven by the lowest score:

Key questionPercentage ‘Yes’
Is the assessment and planning of unpaid work personalised?45%
Do arrangements for unpaid work maximise rehabilitative elements and support desistance?91%
Is unpaid work delivered safely?68%
Is the sentence of the court implemented appropriately?64%
  • People on probation were asked about their diversity, protected characteristics, and personal circumstances in 86 per cent of cases we inspected. However, this information was not used consistently within assessments and plans to understand individuals’ ability to comply and engage with unpaid work. This often limited the ability of unpaid work staff to consider the risk posed to other people on probation, staff, or the public when individuals were on placement.
  • Initial allocation processes were not always supporting sufficiently personalised initial assessments. High volumes of cases requiring initial assessments and plans, and the large geographical areas involved, meant that face-to-face meetings were not always possible.
  • Risk information in regard to domestic abuse or safeguarding was not always explored sufficiently and had led to deficits in the management of cases. Assessments did not always consider how risk of harm to others would be managed during unpaid work.
  • Staff were knowledgeable and were clear in their instructions to people on probation. Despite high unpaid work supervisor vacancy rates, staff were tenacious. There were excellent approaches to ensuring that people on probation were aware of placement rules, with consistent approaches to their application.
  • The placements offered were of good quality, with opportunities to pay back to local communities, and included both group and individual settings. These included placements promoting practical skills such as gardening, painting and decorating, and bicycle workshops. Despite some deficits in the quality of assessment and planning activity, unpaid work staff were generally allocating people on probation to placements that took into account of individuals’ diversity needs and personal circumstances.
  • Mandatory educational courses were offered to people on probation as part of their unpaid work hours. However, these approaches were not consistently successful, particularly for those with English as a second language and individuals with lower levels of literacy skills.
  • Overall stand-down rates, whereby unpaid work participants were sent home from a planned session due to service capacity issues, remained very low, at 1.4 per cent across the region. Where there was a higher number of vacancies for placement facilitators in the region, there were higher rates of planned cancellations, and this was impacting on some service delivery.
  • The percentage of orders for which unpaid work requirements had hours outstanding beyond 12 months had improved. However, a fifth of individuals were still taking longer than 12 months to complete their unpaid work requirements. Unpaid work leaders were working well with the enforcement hub to ensure that relevant processes were understood by teams. Appropriate enforcement action was taken in 13 out of the 17 relevant cases we inspected.
R 2.5. ResettlementRating
Resettlement work is timely, personalised, and coordinated, addressing the individual’s resettlement needs and supporting their integration into the community.Inadequate

Our rating[10] for resettlement is based on the percentage of cases we inspected being judged satisfactory against one key question:

Key questionPercentage ‘Yes’
Is resettlement timely, personalised, and coordinated, and does it address key resettlement needs and support the individual’s integration into the community?41%
  • Work to prepare people for release from prison and to plan the management of their risk to others was often insufficient. Clear handovers between prison and probation staff would have supported key information exchange between prison and community practitioners, but this was evident in only just over half of the relevant cases we inspected.
  • Community practitioners were offering proportionate levels of contact with prisoners before their release in only 45 per cent of cases. Despite a relatively large prison estate within the East Midlands, there were insufficient facilities to support the demand for face-to-face and video-link appointments between community staff and prisoners. This impacted on pre-release engagement and resettlement planning.
  • The coordination of resettlement activity with other services being delivered in prison was not always effective. Community practitioners were not routinely identifying and addressing key risk of harm issues before release, taking place in only 53 out of 103 relevant cases. The region had been unable to deploy QDOs within prison teams to support quality assurance, with a general recognition by regional leaders that quality assurance processes needed to be developed further.
  • Regional prison and probation leaders were supporting some necessary improvement activity, including increasing the number of probation staff working in prisons. Collaboration between probation and prison commissioning teams had resulted in some services to assist multi-agency ‘departure lounges’ to support resettlement activity. In total, there were sufficient resettlement services delivered in line with the prisoner’s resettlement needs in 65 out of 100 relevant cases.
R 2.6. Statutory victim workRating
Relevant and timely information is provided to victims of a serious offence, and they are given the opportunity to contribute their views at key points in the sentence.Good

Our rating[11] for victim work is based on the percentage of cases we inspected being judged satisfactory against three key questions and is driven by the lowest score:

Key questionPercentage ‘Yes’
Does initial contact with victims encourage engagement with the victim contact scheme and provide information about sources of support?86%
Is there effective information and communication exchange to support the safety of victims?71%
Does pre-release contact with victims allow them to make appropriate contributions to the conditions of release?93%

Statutory victim work relates to the activity by the region in relation to the victim contact scheme. This provides victims with the right to support from the Probation Service for the duration of the sentence, where the perpetrator of a violent or sexual offence is sentenced to 12 months in prison or more.

  • Initial contact with the victim was made at an appropriate time in the majority of cases we inspected. VLOs interviewed during the inspection were dedicated to ensuring that victims had appropriate information to make informed choices about whether to participate in the scheme, and what to expect at different points in the sentence. This was evidenced within the cases we inspected.
  • Further work was needed by regional leaders to ensure that referrals from police witness care units contained sufficient information on diversity and the nature of victims’ experiences. VLO staff had developed systems to try to mitigate these challenges, but these were not always effective. In some instances, referrals were delayed or had missing information. Initial letters to victims were therefore not always sufficiently personalised or tailored to their diversity needs (this was sufficient in 14 out of 21 cases).
  • In nearly all the cases we inspected, victims were given opportunities to contribute their views to inform decisions about a prisoner’s release. VLOs were proactive in sharing relevant information about victims with probation practitioners to support their safety planning.
  • Information about the management of the person on probation was not always shared in a timely manner with VLOs from sentence management teams (this took place in only seven out of 14 relevant cases). VLOs did not have enough input into Level 1 MAPPA reviews and therefore information that might have been critical to keep victims safe was not always shared in a timely manner. This included changes to prisoner release dates.

Learning from Serious Further Offences (Back to top)

SFOs in the region were dealt with by an SFO team within the performance and quality business unit. At the point of inspection, the team comprised one SFO manager, four reviewing managers, and two administrative staff.

  • Allocated resources were not sufficient to meet regional need. On unification of the Probation Service in 2021, the region was allocated one SFO manager and two reviewing managers. In total, there were 33 outstanding SFO reviews at the point of inspection. The region had recruited an additional two reviewing managers, although this was not predicted to resolve the backlog fully. However, new processes to streamline full SFO reviews had led to staff feeling that workloads had become more manageable.
  • The region had put in place some actions in response to the backlog. This included priority allocation of high-profile SFO reviews and an early-look checklist to identify learning. However, this did not fully mitigate the lack of robust learning from a full SFO review to address deficits in current systems or practice that might have prevented further serious incidents.
  • Processes were in place to keep victims informed of delays to SFO review timescales in cases where individuals had already been sentenced. While this was reassuring to some extent, it was not meeting the needs of victims who had been subject to serious violent or sexual offences by perpetrators who were under probation supervision.
  • National training received by reviewing managers did not equip them with the skills and knowledge needed. Experienced staff had been supporting the learning and development of newer reviewing managers. Between May and October 2024, there had been only two reviewing managers within the team. The region had completed only four SFO reviews between December 2023 and December 2024. Three had been quality assured by HMPPS and one by HM Inspectorate of Probation. All had been rated as ‘Good’.
  • There was evidence that the region had implemented systems as a result of some high-profile SFOs. Decisions to place practitioner staff within local authority children’s services teams had led to some positive partnership safeguarding work, but this was not having enough impact on supporting improvements within frontline practice.
  • A regional learning platform had recently been introduced to track learning from SFOs, deaths under supervision, and internal management reviews. The links to the quality forum and learning and development teams may improve the effectiveness by which learning is understood and embedded across the organisation.
  • The deficits identified from SFOs over the previous 12 months were similar to those found within inspected cases. These included insufficient offender assessment system (OASys) assessments; ineffective management oversight, including countersigning practice; deficient child safeguarding practice; and limited professional curiosity.

Data annexe (Back to top)

East Midlands Regional Data Annexe
(XLSX, 257 KB)

Effective practice (Back to top)

Effective Practice Spotlight: East Midlands region

Press release (Back to top)

Probation services in the East Midlands region receive an overall regional rating of ‘Inadequate’.

Further information (Back to top)

Full data from this inspection and further information about the methodology used to conduct this inspection is available in the data annexe.

A glossary of terms used in this report is available on our website.

This inspection was led by HM Inspector Leon Bonas supported by a team of inspectors and colleagues from across the Inspectorate. We would like to thank all those who participated in any way in this inspection. Without their help and cooperation, the inspection would not have been possible.

[1] SDS40 provides that prisoners will be automatically released on licence after having served 40 per cent of their sentence instead of 50 per cent.

[2] Probation reset refers to a national policy decision where probation supervision will be suspended two-thirds of the way through the probation period, unless exemption criteria is met.

[3] Source: Office for National Statistics. (July 2024). UK population estimates, mid-2023

[4] The prioritisation framework is a national guidance produced by the Probation Service to provide PDUs with clarity about which activity to deprioritise when there is insufficient capacity to deliver services.

[5] A team dedicated to supporting the needs of young adults.

[6] The rating for the standard is driven by the aggregate scores from PDUs for the key questions, which is placed in a rating band. Full data and further information about inspection methodology is available in the data workbook on our website.

[7] The rating for the standard is driven by the aggregate scores from PDUs for the key questions, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. Full data and further information about inspection methodology is available in the data workbook for this inspection on our website.

[8] The rating for the standard is driven by the aggregate score from PDU and unpaid work case inspections, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. Full data and further information about inspection methodology is available in the data workbook for this inspection on our website.

[9] The rating for the standard is driven by the lowest score on each of the key questions, from unpaid work cases inspected during regional fieldwork, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. Full data and further information about inspection methodology is available in the data workbook for this inspection on our website.

[10] The rating for the standard is driven by the aggregate data from resettlement cases in PDU inspections, giving a score for the key question, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. Full data and further information about inspection methodology is available in the data workbook for this inspection on our website.

[11] The rating for the standard is driven by the lowest score on each of the key questions, from eligible cases inspected as part of regional fieldwork, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table. Full data and further information about inspection methodology is available in the data workbook for this inspection on our website.