An inspection of probation services in County Durham and Darlington PDU

Foreword (Back to top)

In County Durham and Darlington Probation Delivery Unit (PDU) we found collaborative partnership arrangements and a strong commitment to engaging people on probation. However, the quantity and quality of work delivered to reduce reoffending to keep people safe was insufficient.

Therefore, we have given the PDU an overall rating of ‘Inadequate’.

Reoffending rates within the PDU’s caseload were notably higher than the national average. The resulting volume of reconvictions and new sentences undermined the effectiveness of Probation Reset in reducing workloads for frontline practitioners. This was compounded by the disproportionately large number of cases in the PDU that were assessed as high, or very high, risk of serious harm. Persistently high workloads, and challenges in recruiting target numbers of probation officers to some areas of the PDU, had caused stress and was contributing to high levels of sickness absence. Middle managers also experienced high workloads, which prevented them from evidencing sufficient management oversight of cases.

Despite that, the PDU head was striving to develop a fair and transparent model of leadership that created opportunities for all staff to celebrate success and share feedback and ideas with the leadership team. Staff attrition was low, which reflected the commitment of staff and the attention leaders were paying to recognising their efforts.

Leaders were working proactively with partners to reduce reoffending and find creative ways to overcome geographical challenges and make services more accessible for people on probation. The hub model they implemented provided a network of ‘one-stop shops’ for both men and women within their local communities. This promoted engagement and compliance and supported desistance.

Leaders were committed to giving people on probation a voice to influence improvements to processes. There were opportunities for people on probation to become peer mentors through commissioned providers, which complemented the services offered by the PDU.

The PDU will undoubtedly be disappointed with the outcome of this inspection. However, we hope that shining a light on the challenges they face will enable them to get the necessary support to improve sentence delivery and outcomes for people on probation.

Martin Jones CBE

HM Chief Inspector of Probation

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Ratings (Back to top)

Fieldwork started July 2025

Score 3/21

Overall rating

Inadequate

1. Organisational arrangements and activity

P 1.1 Leadership	Requires improvement
P 1.2 Staffing	Requires improvement
P 1.3 Services	Requires improvement

2. Service delivery

P 2.1 Assessment	Inadequate
P 2.2 Planning	Inadequate
P 2.3 Implementation and delivery	Inadequate
P 2.4 Reviewing	Inadequate

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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.

County Durham and Darlington PDU should:

1. provide all staff with the necessary training to undertake their roles, including in relation to assessing and managing risk in cases where there are domestic abuse and child safeguarding concerns
2. ensure information on domestic abuse and child safeguarding is complete and analysed sufficiently to inform the quality of assessment, planning and management of people on probation
3. improve the use of interventions and services available for people on probation to support desistance and manage the risk of harm
4. ensure middle managers have enough capacity to provide the level of oversight appropriate to the needs of staff members and level of casework in the team
5. carry out an analysis of people on probation and develop a strategy for addressing their needs.

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Background (Back to top)

We conducted fieldwork in County Durham and Darlington PDU over the period of two weeks, beginning 30 June 2025. We inspected 27 community orders and 30 releases on licence from custody where sentences and licences had commenced during two separate weeks, between 11 November and 17 November 2024, and 18 November and 24 November 2024. We also conducted 50 interviews with probation practitioners.

The PDU covered a largely rural geographical area, which included the Pennines in the west and coastline to the east. There were pockets of high deprivation across the county. The population had very limited ethnic diversity and was predominantly White British; however, there was an established Gypsy Roma Traveller community.

The PDU had four offices, which were in Darlington, Durham, Newton Aycliffe and Peterlee. There were also three men’s hubs and four women’s hubs in accessible locations. These provided people on probation with a range of services delivered by co-located commissioned providers and partner agencies.

The area was covered by two local authorities (Darlington Borough Council and Durham County Council) and was served by Durham Constabulary. The county had three courts: Durham Crown Court, Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court and Peterlee Magistrates’ Court. There were four local prisons: HM Prison (HMP) Deerbolt (category C), HMP Durham (category B and remand), HMP Frankland (category A), and HMP Low Newton (women’s maximum-security prison).

Commissioned rehabilitative services (CRS) were delivered by a number of providers. St Giles Wise delivered the women’s services and personal wellbeing services; Ingeus delivered finance, benefit and debt advocacy, as well as dependency and recovery support; and Thirteen delivered accommodation services. Drug and alcohol treatment was delivered by Way Through in Durham and We Are With You in Darlington.

At the time of our inspection the PDU employed 127 full-time equivalent staff, who were managing a caseload of 2,508. This comprised 1,120 cases on community-based sentences, 756 subject to post-release supervision and 632 custodial cases.

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1. Organisational arrangements and activity (Back to top)

P 1.1. Leadership	Rating
The leadership of the PDU enables delivery of a high quality, personalised, and responsive service for all people on probation.	Requires improvement

Strengths:

• The PDU leadership team were visible and proactively involved in strategic boards and subgroups. These included the Reducing Reoffending Delivery Group (RRDG), which was a subgroup of the Local Criminal Justice Board and chaired by the PDU head. The RRDG focused on addressing priority offending-related factors that were prevalent in the local population, including homelessness, unemployment, and substance misuse.
• The PDU had a virtual team of female staff assigned to work with women on probation. They worked creatively with commissioned women’s services providers in hubs, which offered women-only reporting and direct access to a wide range of services and support.
• Young adults in the PDU’s caseload were identified as a priority cohort due to their disproportionately high risk of reoffending and harm. To enable practitioners to work responsively with these individuals, all staff received training in trauma-informed practice funded by County Durham and Darlington’s Serious Violence Reduction Partnership. The PDU secured additional targeted support through the Integrated Offender Management (IOM) scheme for the young adults with the greatest need, risk and complexity who were transitioning up from local youth justice services.
• In response to staff feedback, the PDU head launched a leadership team pledge in November 2024. The pledge set out the leadership team’s commitment to being visible, approachable and accessible, maintaining a safe and inclusive working environment, being fair and transparent, celebrating staff members’ achievements, ensuring staff members’ voices were heard and promoting learning opportunities for all.
• Leaders were focused on staff wellbeing and engagement. Staff described leaders as accessible, approachable and responsive. The PDU head was a strong advocate of procedural justice and transparency in decision-making. This included a cross-grade reward and recognition panel to give confidence that good work was being identified equitably.
• The PDU head’s ambition was to create a psychologically safe environment where everyone would thrive and reach their full potential. In support of this, managers attended psychologically informed management training and a psychologist from the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) pathway team facilitated reflective sessions with staff and managers. Managers also participated in leadership development events to promote a better understanding of each other’s learning styles and improve communication.
• There were a range of opportunities for PDU staff to communicate with and influence the leadership team. This included a staff engagement and wellbeing committee (SEWC), which was attended by representatives from each office in the PDU. SEWC representatives shared updates and feedback from their sites and raised concerns and complaints on behalf of their colleagues. The minutes of SEWC meetings were made available to all staff.
• The PDU’s achievements in engaging people on probation (EPOP) were impressive. The PDU head enthusiastically chaired the EPOP forum. This was well attended by people with lived experience, because the PDU had recruited the highest number of forum representatives in the region. As a result of their participation, EPOP representatives had been presented with a range of opportunities to support their desistance from crime and improve their employability. This included becoming qualified peer researchers for Durham University, contributing to training for new staff, and undertaking training to become peer mentors through one of the PDU’s CRS providers.

Areas for improvement:

• The PDU head had established governance arrangements through her leadership team to drive delivery of effective frontline practice and achieve the PDU’s vision, which was aligned with the regional strategy of ‘doing the right thing to keep people safe’. However, the deficits we found in the quality of sentence delivery and risk management demonstrated that these arrangements were not robust enough to enable the PDU to meet its aims.
• The PDU leadership team had a risk register, which they reviewed monthly. This appropriately identified risks relating to probation practitioners’ capability and workload, and the challenges of service delivery given the complexity of local authority structures and geography of the PDU. It also identified risks relating to the implementation of the necessary infrastructure to manage Probation Reset. However, it did not sufficiently consider risks to service delivery relating to the risk and need profile of the PDU’s caseload.
• The PDU head received management information from regional colleagues which included an overview of the PDU’s caseload. However, this did not include a sufficiently detailed analysis of people on probations’ needs to enable her to identify issues of disproportionality or to inform decisions about the services needed for minority ethnic groups.
• PDU leaders’ focus on performance had resulted in improvements against a range of metrics, including the timeliness of initial sentence plans. However, they had given too much attention to achieving performance targets, to the detriment of quality. Senior probation officers (SPOs) asserted that timeliness and quality were given equal priority but admitted to countersigning assessments and plans with deficiencies in order to meet target completion dates.
• There were deficiencies in implementation and delivery of sentences in the casework we inspected. Some practitioners said that this was because they lacked sufficient knowledge and training to deliver structured intervention work during their one-to-one sessions with people. on probation.
• Feedback from staff about the value of protected development days was mixed. Staff said there were inconsistencies in the approach and quality of delivery by SPOs.
• Practitioners were also overwhelmed by the scale and pace of change resulting from national initiatives. They felt that communication received from the PDU leadership team by email and through team meetings did not always give them the clarity they needed, especially as the quality of communication differed from team to team. Practitioners did not always find that internal change was well managed or communicated and they believed there was a lack of transparency between the teams.

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P 1.2 Staffing	Rating
The leadership of the PDU enables delivery of a high quality, personalised, and responsive service for all people on probation.	Requires improvement

Strengths:

• The leadership team had analysed the PDU’s staffing and development needs, to help to inform the priorities in its business plan. They had identified gaps in the training for probation services officers (PSOs) and had started to address these by providing training on toolkit delivery.
• Managers created opportunities for staff development. For example, they encouraged practitioners to take lead roles in different areas of practice and share their knowledge and experience with colleagues through protected development day activities and collaborative partnership work. Of the staff who responded to our survey, 85 per cent agreed that the PDU promoted a culture of learning and continuous improvement.
• Seventy-eight per cent of respondents to our staff survey felt that supervision sessions were sufficiently frequent for their needs and improved the quality of their work. During focus groups, practitioners and managers said they had regular ad-hoc case discussions in addition to case-focused supervision sessions.
• Strategic partners were positive about the take-up of multi-agency training opportunities by probation staff. These included a culture and diversity training event.
• Practitioners working with women on probation had received a wealth of training to inform their work, including safety planning, working with sex workers, stalking, drug awareness, harm minimisation, strangulation and brain injury. Female peer mentors were also invited to participate in these training opportunities.
• The PDU leadership team were taking pragmatic action to balance workloads without relocating staff to other offices. That was helping to alleviate some short-term pressure on workloads and overcome some of the challenges created by the geographical distance between probation offices in the PDU.
• Overall, PDU staff attrition rates were significantly lower than the regional average. This reflected the commitment of staff and leaders to creating and maintaining a positive culture.

Areas for improvement:

• The PDU was carrying probation officer (PO) vacancies and had only 73 per cent of required POs in post. This had not been addressed as intended through the Professional Qualification in Probation (PQiP) training programme, because of a recent shortfall in the number of newly qualified officers joining the teams.
• Practitioners’ workloads were the highest in the region. Probation Reset had had limited impact on reducing workloads due to the disproportionately high reoffending rates in the PDU, which resulted in a churn of cases in and out of the newly established Reset Resolution Team.
• The disproportionate number of people on probation assessed as posing a high or very high risk of causing serious harm exacerbated the pressure that staff were facing. Only 54 per cent of the practitioners that we interviewed felt their workload was manageable. This reduced to 48 per cent in relation to the respondents who answered our staff survey.
• Sickness rates in the PDU were higher than the regional average, particularly for PSOs. The PDU head explained that staff absences were due to a range of factors, including stress, some of which was work-related.
• SPOs felt their workload was challenging, especially given the volume of human resources activity that their role involved, particularly in managing sickness absence.
• To mitigate the workload pressures on POs, experienced PSOs in the PDU were allocated cases with higher levels of complexity and risk as a development opportunity. However, the quality of work by PSOs in the cases we inspected was concerning, as was the lack of evidenced management oversight.
• Less than half the required number of practitioners had completed mandatory facilitated training in relation to domestic abuse and child and adult safeguarding. This was worrying, as casework showed deficits in the quality of work to keep people safe in cases where there were domestic abuse and safeguarding concerns. The rate of practitioners completing the Skills for Effective Engagement in Supervision training was also low. This correlated with feedback from some practitioners that they lacked the necessary training to deliver structured intervention work during one-to-one sessions with people on probation.
• Some managers lacked the confidence and experience to address performance issues or seek timely support from available sources, such as the regional quality development officers.
• We found insufficient evidence of effective management oversight across the cases we inspected. Managers attributed this to a recording issue and said they didn’t have time to capture the details of all case discussions. They also admitted that they often did not have the capacity to follow up on actions agreed during case discussions.

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P 1.3 Services	Rating
A comprehensive range of high-quality services is in place, supporting a tailored and responsive service for all people on probation.	Requires improvement

Strengths:

• The PDU was effectively delivering accommodation support for people on probation who needed places to live. The PDU head sat on the local strategic housing board to influence accommodation providers to provide housing for people on probation. Temporary accommodation provided through a scheme known as CAS3 was well used, although demand did exceed supply. The accommodation CRS provider was receiving high numbers of referrals and finding accommodation solutions for eight to 10 people on probation each month. The PDU worked collaboratively with the Durham and Darlington local authority housing teams, who identified people on probation as a cohort to support as part of their homeless and rough sleeping strategy. The national Accommodation for Ex-Offenders scheme had been used to help people on probation to secure and sustain tenancies.
• Male and female reporting hubs were established across the PDU to improve the accessibility of services and support for people on probation. Commissioned partners were co-located in venues with probation practitioners to facilitate joint working and promote the engagement of people on probation. Peer mentors were also based in the hubs, which provided people on probation with relatable role models who offered an additional source of support. In Probation Reset cases, voluntary support was available through the hubs for up to 90 days after contact was suspended.
• Recovery support groups led by people with lived experience of substance misuse were available for men and women managed under the Integrated Offender Management (IOM) scheme. They provided therapeutic spaces within community settings where individuals benefited from peer support and access to a comprehensive range of services and facilities.
• IOM police officers and probation practitioners were working well together. A strategic decision had been made to include prolific shoplifters in IOM, in response to high rates of reoffending in the county. Police officers visited people on probation at home in their local communities. People being released from prison were collected at the prison gate to guide them to their first appointments. IOM police also facilitated their ongoing attendance at appointments. Police officers supported individuals to engage in sports and therapeutic craft activities which were facilitated by a small charity. This was paid for with money secured by the PDU head from the Regional Outcomes and Innovation Fund. Keyworkers from local drug and alcohol treatment providers were embedded in the IOM team, which enabled people to access responsive treatment services.
• Practitioners working with women on probation had forged positive relationships with HMP Low Newton, the local women’s prison, to carry out in-reach work before their release. They also attended the prison’s ‘resettlement market’ with partner agencies to initiate pre-release work. Women subject to release on temporary licence were instructed to attend one of the women’s hubs to promote engagement.
• Quarterly feedback gathered by EPOP representatives consistently demonstrated that people on probation valued their relationships with probation practitioners. Practitioners offered flexibility and adapted their approach to accommodate individuals’ diversity factors and personal circumstances.
• Two-thirds of the people in the PDU’s caseload had an identified mental health need. Practitioners appropriately made referrals to the OPD pathway team, who provided consultation services to support practitioners in managing people on probation who presented with personality disorders, as well as people with autism. The OPD team also facilitated links between the PDU and Enhanced Reconnect, who supported people released from prison with complex physical health needs.
• Multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA) at Levels 2 and 3 were strong. The probation MAPPA coordinator worked closely with the police to screen referrals. They provided detailed feedback on referrals that did not meet the threshold, and the quality of referrals had improved as a result. There were no backlogs, meaning new cases were heard within four weeks of acceptance. MAPPA meetings were consistently well attended by partner agencies. MAPPA refresher training had been delivered to practitioners across the PDU. This focused mainly on the MAPPA Level 1 framework, as this had been an area where deficiencies had previously been found. Training and observation opportunities were also provided to PQiPs and newly qualified officers.
• PDU staff and managers regularly attended, and provided timely information to, multi-agency risk assessment conferences (MARACs) and multi-agency tasking and coordination (MATAC) meetings to tackle the most harmful domestic abuse perpetrators in the county. They also liaised effectively with police colleagues to protect victims through disclosures under Clare’s Law and Sarah’s Law.

Areas for improvement:

• Accredited programmes were only delivered in the Durham and Darlington probation offices, which were difficult to access by the people on probation living in Peterlee and other towns and villages across the country.
• Managers and practitioners were frustrated by challenges in gaining sufficiently detailed domestic abuse and child safeguarding information from police and children’s social care to inform their assessments and plans. Protocols agreed at a regional level with the Durham and Northumbria police forces had not provided an effective solution. Practitioners relied on building relationships with neighbourhood police officers and IOM police to try and circumvent the barriers to effective information-sharing that they encountered.
• The two local authorities took different approaches to child safeguarding enquiries. Practitioners working in Darlington could make a telephone enquiry to Darlington Borough Council’s children’s services team to gather essential information to inform their decision-making on whether to make a child safeguarding referral. Practitioners making enquiries to Durham County Council children’s services had to complete a lengthy referral form for every enquiry, which often returned limited detail and required further follow-up.
• The community employment lead for the North East region was working with the Department for Work and Pensions to secure a dedicated work coach for every probation office in the PDU. However, the benefits of this were not yet evident, as less than half of the people on probation in the cases we inspected had received enough support to access education, training and employment.
• The primary care Mental Health Treatment Requirement was available in the PDU but some people on probation had waited up to nine months to start their requirement with an assistant psychologist. This undermined its effectiveness.
• Unpaid work provision for women was insufficient for the needs of this cohort. There were limited placements suitable for women, who often had to complete their hours in mixed gender work parties.
• There were inconsistencies in provision for drug and alcohol treatment to people on probation outside of the IOM scheme. Probation practitioners found information-sharing was insufficient for their needs, especially when they needed to provide progress reports to courts for Drug Rehabilitation Requirement (DRR) reviews. The RRDG and Combating Drugs and Alcohol Board were sighted on the issues and had developed a plan to improve the numbers of people in treatment.

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Diversity and inclusion (Back to top)

Strengths: 

• The PDU had secured funding through the Ministry of Justice Workplace Adjustment Service to provide additional administrative support for practitioners with neurodiverse conditions and/or learning difficulties.
• The PDU had an established virtual women’s concentrator team, which worked with commissioned providers and wider partnership agencies to provide targeted support for women on probation.
• The PDU’s caseload featured a disproportionate number of older men who had committed mainly violent and sexual offences and were assessed as posing a high or very high risk of serious harm. The PDU contributed to local authority workshops, delivered to care home managers, which focused on managing risk in residential care settings. 
• There was a significant Gypsy, Roma, Traveller (GRT) community within the PDU and GRT was the largest ethnic minority identified in the PDU’s caseload. The PDU worked with the local authority GRT team to provide training and guidance to improve practitioners’ cultural competence and promote effective engagement with this cohort. 
• The PDU had also considered the specific needs and risk factors relating to young adults, who were identified as a priority cohort within the caseload. Practitioners had received trauma-informed training to equip them to work responsively with these individuals. Young adults transitioning from youth justice services had been included within the IOM cohort, which meant they received an enhanced level of resource and targeted support.
• The PDU had forged positive working relationships with both Durham and Darlington youth justice teams, and the PDU head was represented on the youth justice management boards. Seconded probation officers were based in both services and supported smooth transitions from youth to adult services. Youth justice service leaders praised the PDU for recognising the vulnerability, trauma histories, adverse childhood experiences, mental ill-health, neurodiversity and special educational needs that affected young adults. Both probation and youth justice managers agreed that information-sharing between the agencies to manage the needs and risks of young adults was effective. 
• The hubs model established across the PDU through collaboration between probation and partner agencies took account of the geographical challenges facing people on probation and improved the accessibility of services. 
• The OPD pathway team actively chased up referrals for any people on probation that screened into their service who did not identify as White British. They also had a culturally informed assessment tool and explored racial trauma with these individuals.  
• People on probation could access an NHS outreach service called The Health Squad, who visited the hubs to offer health screening services and advice. The service helped individuals to secure appointments with GPs and dentists, to promote wellbeing and increase positive health outcomes for people most likely to experience health inequalities. 

Areas for improvement: 

• The PDU’s needs analysis data relating to its caseload did not clearly identify people on probation with Black heritage. Consequently, the PDU had not considered this cohort’s offending patterns, offending-related needs and risks, or the disproportionality affecting them.
• The PDU followed the national travel policy when reimbursing people on probation for travel costs. However, we heard concerns that, because the PDU covered a large rural area, the restrictions in the travel policy disproportionately affected some people on probation who travelled long distances from areas of high multiple deprivation.

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2. Service delivery (Back to top)

P 2.1 Assessment	Rating
Assessment is well-informed, analytical and personalised, involving actively the person on probation.	Inadequate

Our rating[1] for assessment is based on the percentage of cases we inspected being judged satisfactory against three key questions and is driven by the lowest score:

Key question	Percentage ‘Yes’
Does assessment focus sufficiently on engaging the person on probation?	63%
Does assessment focus sufficiently on the factors linked to offending and desistance?	75%
Does assessment focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe?	39%

• It was positive that in 72 per cent of the cases we inspected, practitioners had involved people on probation meaningfully in the assessment of their needs and risks. Assessments appropriately considered individuals’ lived experience and the impact that their diversity and personal circumstances might have on their ability to access services and engage and comply with their sentence requirements.
• When assessing people on probation’s risk of reoffending, practitioners analysed all available sources of information in 75 per cent of cases. This enabled them to make accurate assessments of individuals’ offending-related needs, as well as their strengths and protective factors.
• However, practitioners only used all available sources of information about individuals’ risk of harm in just over half (51 per cent) of inspected cases. This included information about domestic abuse and child safeguarding concerns. As a result, we found that risk of harm to actual and potential victims was not sufficiently identified and analysed in 40 per cent of cases. Worryingly, domestic abuse and child safeguarding information was not used to assess the individual’s suitability for a curfew in five out of 13 cases where curfews were made.

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P 2.2 Planning	Rating
Planning is well-informed, holistic and personalised, involving actively the person on probation.	Inadequate

Our rating[2] for planning is based on the percentage of cases we inspected being judged satisfactory against three key questions and is driven by the lowest score:

Key question	Percentage ‘Yes’
Does planning focus sufficiently on engaging the person on probation?	61%
Does planning focus sufficiently on reducing reoffending and supporting desistance?	70%
Does planning focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe?	47%

• Similarly to assessment, in most cases we found that practitioners involved people on probation meaningfully in planning activity and took account of individuals’ diversity and personal circumstances.
• In 75 per cent of cases, plans set out an appropriate level and type of contact to promote engagement and support sentence delivery.
• Plans appropriately prioritised the most critical offending-related factors and included measures to build on individuals’ strengths and protective factors to support their desistance.
• However, we were concerned about the quality of planning to keep people safe, as only 54 per cent of plans paid sufficient attention to risk of harm factors and included robust contingency arrangements to manage an escalation in risk of harm. There was a lack of attention to safety planning in relation to intimate partners, children and other family members. This was a particular concern given the significant number of people on probation in the PDU’s caseload who were assessed as posing a high or very high risk of serious harm to others.
  

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P 2.3. Implementation and delivery	Rating
High-quality well-focused, personalised, and coordinated services are delivered, engaging the person on probation.	Inadequate

Our rating[3] for implementation and delivery is based on the percentage of cases we inspected being judged satisfactory against three key questions and is driven by the lowest score:

Key question	Percentage ‘Yes’
Is the sentence or post-custody period implemented effectively with a focus on engaging the person on probation?	63%
Does the implementation and delivery of services effectively support desistance?	44%
Does the implementation and delivery of services effectively support the safety of other people?	23%

• We saw a continued focus on positive engagement with people on probation in relation to sentence delivery. In most cases, practitioners provided flexibility to accommodate individuals’ personal circumstances.
• However one-to-one supervision sessions often lacked structure, and we saw a lack of evidence of meaningful intervention work to support people on probation to desist from crime.
• Commissioned rehabilitative services were offered in 37 out of 50 relevant cases. However, the involvement of other organisations in the delivery of services was not sufficiently well coordinated and the quantity and quality of service delivery were inconsistent. There was a lack of proactive information-sharing and joint-working between practitioners with substance misuse treatment providers, which undermined the effectiveness of drug and alcohol treatment requirements.
• Home visits were undertaken to support the management of risk of harm in 34 out of 49 cases where they were needed, but the nature and frequency of other contact with people on probation were insufficient to keep people safe.
• There was insufficient evidence of effective information-sharing and multi-agency working in cases with domestic abuse and child safeguarding concerns. This contributed to our overall findings that insufficient attention was paid to protecting actual and potential victims in 41 out of 56 relevant cases.

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P 2.4. Reviewing	Rating
Reviewing of progress is well-informed, analytical and personalised, involving actively the person on probation.	Inadequate

Our rating[4] for reviewing is based on the percentage of cases we inspected being judged satisfactory against three key questions and is driven by the lowest score:

Key question	Percentage ‘Yes’
Does reviewing focus sufficiently on supporting the compliance and engagement of the person on probation?	68%
Does reviewing focus sufficiently on supporting desistance?	52%
Does reviewing focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe?	26%

• Written progress reviews were completed in most cases and reviewing activity considered people on probation’s engagement and compliance.
• Individuals were involved meaningfully in reviewing their progress in 30 out of 52 relevant cases, but they were only involved in reviewing changes in their risk of harm in 14 out of 43 relevant cases.
• Only half of completed reviews were informed by input from other agencies working with the people on probation, and just over a third were informed by agencies involved in managing individuals’ risk of harm.
• Reviews did not sufficiently reflect critical changes in offending-related factors, such as increased substance misuse or a decline in mental health. Practitioners demonstrated a lack of professional curiosity in response to intelligence regarding new arrests and convictions. Insufficient attention was given to exit planning when contact was being suspended for Probation Reset.
• Reviews did not consistently capture and respond to potential changes in risk of harm, including when people on probation disclosed new intimate relationships or changes in contact with children. There was a lack of evidence of routine ongoing domestic abuse and child safeguarding enquiries to enable practitioners to proactively monitor these risk of harm factors.

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 Jo Curphey, 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] The rating for the standard is driven by the score for the key question, which is placed in a rating band. Full data and further information about inspection methodology is available in the data annexe.

[2] The rating for the standard is driven by the score for the key question, which is placed in a rating band. Full data and further information about inspection methodology is available in the data annexe.

[3] The rating for the standard is driven by the score for the key question, which is placed in a rating band. Full data and further information about inspection methodology is available in the data annexe.

[4] The rating for the standard is driven by the lowest score on each of the key questions, which is placed in a rating band, indicated in bold in the table.