Dynamic Inspection of Public Protection in West Midlands region
Chief Inspector’s judgement (Back to top)
This inspection of public protection work in the West Midlands found that, despite strong leadership commitment and clear strategic priorities, delivery of work to keep people safe was not yet meeting the required standard. While staff understood its importance, this was not consistently reflected in the quality of assessment, planning, and delivery. Too often, casework lacked professional curiosity and failed to draw on all available information to manage risk effectively.
Although we saw an improving picture, workforce pressures remained a significant challenge. Vacancies in key areas, combined with high levels of practitioner and middle manager inexperience, continued to affect capacity and confidence. Recruitment, both internally and across a range of service providers, was hampered by excessive vetting delays, and pay and workloads were routinely cited as retention concerns. These pressures were compounded by extensive organisational changes and complex national directives intended to create capacity, but which leaders and staff described as burdensome and difficult to implement.
Inspectors were concerned by evidence of professional erosion, with many practitioners lacking the skills and confidence to manage complex risks, challenge professional disagreements, and exercise autonomy and curiosity. In less experienced staff, this had created an environment focused on procedural compliance rather than informed, analytical decision-making. Management oversight was inconsistent, and, in too many cases, public protection deficits were not identified or addressed by senior probation officers (SPOs). To improve the quality of public protection work, leaders must strengthen the capability of middle managers to lead, model, and embed good practice across teams.
Multi-agency arrangements were not working as well as they should to support joined-up risk management and the exchange of information. Domestic abuse information sharing had improved as a result of joint efforts by probation and police leaders; however, child safeguarding practice was underdeveloped and an area for urgent attention. Multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA) were inconsistent, particularly in the management of Level 1 cases, resulting in missed opportunities for collaborative risk management. Many practitioners lacked an understanding of MAPPA functions and processes, and this, combined with practitioner uncertainty in the management of complex cases, led to an over-reliance on MAPPA as a default approach rather than a considered escalation based on assessed risk.
Inspectors also saw insufficient delivery of targeted interventions and services to address risk in the cases we inspected, which limited the effectiveness of risk management and rehabilitation efforts.
Despite clear messaging from leaders about the importance of keeping people safe, systemic barriers, including resourcing, organisational complexity, and insufficient multi-agency communication, remained significant challenges for the West Midlands to overcome. Strengthening skills, confidence, oversight, and service delivery will be essential to ensure that the region can consistently meet its public protection responsibilities.
Context (Back to top)
We inspected the quality of public protection work in 84 cases from the West Midlands, reviewing case files and interviewing probation practitioners to evaluate whether the work was sufficient to keep people safe. Inspectors also conducted a range of focus groups with staff and partners from across the region, to determine the efficacy of organisational arrangements to support public protection.
The cases, which started during a two-week period in May 2025, were inspected across key stages: assessment and planning, sentence delivery, and reviewing activity. Most cases we inspected involved white men, aged 36–55, with violence and sexual offending the most prevalent offence types. Concerns about domestic abuse and risk to children were also prevalent across the sample. Thirty per cent of inspected cases were subject to MAPPA Level 1 management. Regionally, 39 per cent of the supervised cohort was managed under MAPPA, indicating that a significant proportion of individuals required coordinated multi-agency oversight. The region operated across a complex multi-agency landscape, spanning four police force areas and 35 local authorities, and was supported by 13 prisons, 13 approved premises, and 12 courts.
The West Midlands region comprised 11 probation delivery units (PDUs) and, at the time of this inspection, had 1,982 staff in post, representing 92 per cent of its overall target staffing level. While staffing numbers were continuing to improve, there remained gaps in some key functions. Staff were responsible for the management of 25,343 people on probation, more than 16,500 of whom were in the community, with the remainder serving custodial sentences.
The region was large and geographically varied, with major urban centres, such as Birmingham and Coventry, facing very different demands to more rural areas, such as Herefordshire and parts of Staffordshire.
Inspection commentary (Back to top)
Regional leaders placed public protection at the centre of delivery plans, with clear strategic and operational priorities. Staff survey responses confirmed strong awareness of public protection as a priority. Worryingly, however, our findings revealed significant shortfalls in practice. Effective work to keep people safe was evident in less than half of the assessments we inspected (49 per cent). While planning was slightly better (58 per cent), delivery against those plans and activity to review emerging information linked to risk was insufficient in around one in two cases in our sample.
Although less acute than in other areas of the country, staffing and resources remained a challenge. Rural areas, such as in Herefordshire, had acute recruitment challenges, resulting in workloads well above desired levels. Other core functions, including case administration, accredited programmes, and resettlement teams, also operated with significant resourcing gaps, creating pressure points that risked undermining service delivery. Long vetting processes and national recruitment campaigns that often failed to meet local need contributed to this position.
To deliver policy expectations, HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) identified a national workload reduction target of 25 per cent. In response, West Midlands leaders had utilised and adapted a national activity weighting database to calculate actual resource requirements for core public protection and court work. Using live regional resourcing data and detailed analysis of over 1,200 sentence management tasks and 400 court activities, the database prioritised essential activities, such as face-to-face contact with people on probation and robust risk assessment. Although workloads remained significant in some parts of the region and across some functions, the model indicated that minimum public protection delivery expectations could be met with clear prioritisation and evidence-based planning, challenging the entrenched narrative that high workloads inevitably compromised public protection. This approach reflected leaders’ commitment to improvement, underpinned by the implementation of the Space initiative, an approach which focused on values, culture, and professional standards. This framework was developed across grades to raise quality expectations, drive performance, and enhance accountability, and was supported by team charters setting out shared standards and values. While this was a strong foundation, these measures were in their infancy and had not yet translated into consistently effective public protection practice.
Leaders had reviewed governance and leadership structures to focus on quality as well as performance measures. Forums such as the sentence management committee and project management board provided clear oversight of priorities, ensured consistent messaging, and provided sufficient governance of implementation. The region had resourced a continuous improvement team, focusing on streamlining processes better to support frontline delivery. Examples of positive impact included the automation of domestic abuse enquiries and provision of overnight arrest information across the supervised cohort.
At the time of our inspection, national measures to manage capacity in the custodial estate were creating significant operational pressures for probation service delivery and across partner agencies. Leaders were working hard to support the implementation of these nationally mandated changes, which were often viewed by heads of service and staff as overwhelming, unhelpful, and risk averse. Initiatives such as Probation Reset and Impact, intended to create headroom for practitioners, were too complex and nuanced to provide meaningful relief, leaving frontline staff struggling to prioritise effectively. The burden created by these national directives meant that regional leaders were spending considerable time filtering and adapting guidance to make it workable locally and to provide clarity for staff. While the published recall rate was 23 per cent, one local police force reported an increase from 33 recalls per month to 100 per month in quarter two of 2025. At HMP Birmingham, receptions from around the country doubled from 2,500 in 2023 to 5,000 in the year before this inspection, resulting in pressure on prison capacity and community resources. All professionals were alert to these challenges, and leaders were monitoring trends to ensure that recalls were proportionate and appropriate. However, frequent, short-term recalls disrupted supervision, undermined rehabilitation, and increased workloads for practitioners managing abrupt transitions between custody and the community. Police and prison pre-release teams faced similar strain, with limited time to prepare for high-risk releases and escalating administrative demands. Bed shortages in approved premises forced out-of-area placements, weakening local support networks and complicating risk management. These pressures risked diverting attention from public protection and eroded the effectiveness of measures aimed at reducing prison numbers. Inspectors were also concerned that shorter sentences and rapid progression to release may have undermined victim confidence.
We saw extensive evidence that a lack of professional confidence was a significant issue. Where trainees on the Professional Qualification in Probation (PQiP) reported positive experiences, they had benefited from experienced mentors, varied learning opportunities, and consistent line management support. By contrast, probation services officers (PSOs) described less structured development, despite managing often complex cases. At the time of this inspection, around 20 per cent of sentence management staff had between two and five years’ experience in practice, and their development had been disrupted by factors such as the Covid-19 pandemic and extensive organisational change. Staff churn was a factor, with one newly qualified officer telling us that they had had eight different managers while training, which had had a significant impact on the consolidation of their learning. Practitioners we interviewed did not always feel well equipped to manage specific risks such as sexual harm and organised crime, which they attributed to insufficient training in some of these areas. To mitigate learning and development gaps across key staff groups, the region had strengthened countersigning arrangements, delivered a range of targeted development sessions and action learning sets, and promoted reflective practice. This activity was informed by routine analysis of assurance findings and supported by quality development teams. Each head of PDU was also supported by a deputy with responsibility for driving improvement through quality assurance and benchmarking. While heads of PDUs spoke positively about the added capacity and expertise that deputies brought, both grades had significant workloads, and some deputies experienced a tension in influencing performance improvements among staff they did not directly line manage. Current arrangements relied heavily on audit and follow-up activity to identify and address gaps in practice, rather than being underpinned by a strong, consistent foundation of learning and development for all staff.
Managers were not consistently identifying practice deficits and missed opportunities to protect the public. In 49 out of 80 cases where oversight should have been present because of risks or staff inexperience, it was ineffective or absent. The region had recently implemented a range of SPO-led quality improvement initiatives, including management case reviews and collaborative quality assurance tools. These aimed to promote coaching and reflection, to empower staff and to provide balance between performance measures and quality practice. We saw some evidence of this activity in our inspected cases, and where casework met our standards, strong management oversight was evident. However, variations remained, indicating that not all managers had a clear understanding of what good practice looked like and were hindered by a range of factors, including inexperience and competing demands on their time.
Many of the issues identified during the inspection mirrored those highlighted in the region’s Serious Further Offence (SFO) reviews. Despite the introduction of development sessions and standardised agenda items to embed SFO learning, improvement action plans had yet to translate into consistent practice. Although targeted overtime had reduced the backlog of SFO reviews from around 70 to 50, delays continued to hinder the timely application of lessons learned and corrective action. Nationally, a revised SFO process and a streamlined template had been introduced to accelerate reviews, with regional leaders monitoring the implications for providing public protection assurance for victims.
Police and local authority partners across the West Midlands reported that national information sharing arrangements were not fit for purpose, despite our recommendation to improve this position following the national inspection of the Probation Service in April 2025.1 Regional leaders had capitalised on strong strategic partnerships to secure a single, consistent domestic abuse enquiry process across all four local police forces. This streamlined approach had significantly improved the efficiency of domestic abuse information requests and responses. In our case sample, this information was present in all cases and met the required quality standard in 88 per cent of relevant assessments. In some cases, inspectors noted police demand management restrictions, limiting information requests to the previous 12 months. This was insufficient and compromised risk assessment; however, these restrictions had now been lifted, allowing practitioners to obtain the full range of relevant information within a reasonable timescale. While information sharing had improved, it remained resource intensive for police partners, with one force handling around 1,000 requests per month from practitioners. Probation practitioners’ access to police databases was inconsistent across the region, and analysis was weak, with domestic abuse information sufficiently analysed in only 29 out of 52 assessments we inspected. Analytical practice was also poor in court work, where pre-sentence reports often failed to draw on available information to inform sentencing advice.
Availability and analysis of child safeguarding information were less well developed. Information to support effective child protection was available in less than two-thirds of relevant cases, and, where present, was sufficiently analysed in only 31 out of 62 assessments. Requests from practitioners often lacked detail or a clear rationale for the information being asked for, leading to frequent misconceptions about parental consent acting as a barrier to information sharing. Insufficient professional curiosity and a complex landscape of varying local authority processes hindered effective safeguarding practice, with many practitioners we interviewed lacking confidence to raise professional disagreement or use escalation processes effectively. Consequently, we saw several examples of missed opportunities to safeguard children proactively. The region had recognised these issues and implemented a programme of analytical workshops for staff, to help them develop an analytically curious approach.
At a strategic level, Probation Service leaders were viewed as a visible and valued presence in key public protection forums. Policing partners described strong working relationships across integrated offender management teams, which functioned well as a result. However, our casework indicated that frontline multi-agency work needed to improve. Almost half of assessments and 43 out of 71 relevant plans did not sufficiently consider information from other agencies or make links to their work with people on probation. Multi-agency collaboration in the implementation and delivery of the sentence was also insufficient in too many cases, and reviews were not consistently informed by the range of information that other professionals could offer.
Similar concerns were evident in the 25 MAPPA Level 1 cases we inspected. Screening was not consistently timely or informed by police partners. Some practitioners lacked confidence in MAPPA processes and did not recognise the value of timely, collaborative screening discussions to inform assessment and risk management planning. We inspected several cases where activity to manage sexual and violent risk, such as device checks, joint home visits, and disclosure was not completed. This was often the result of staff turnover, a lack of understanding about roles and responsibilities, and inconsistent communication between practitioners and the police. Management oversight did not routinely identify these shortfalls. MAPPA coordinators echoed our concerns about limitations in professional confidence. This was often driven by inexperience and fear of scrutiny in the event of SFOs. Inspectors were told, “…there is a sense of panic, and anything remotely complex comes to MAPPA because practitioners do not feel they can manage the risks themselves”. This was straining resources, with a rise in inappropriate MAPPA Level 2 referrals. Attendance at regional skills-based MAPPA training events was low, despite the potential to increase competence and confidence in those who took part. Current management arrangements, with MAPPA coordinators reporting to heads of PDU rather than the head of public protection, were intended to strengthen local links, but needed review to ensure clarity and accountability.
The victim contact scheme (VCS) was well embedded, with a satisfaction rate of 86 per cent. Victim liaison officers were present at key forums such as MAPPA, with victims’ voices described as being at the front and centre in these discussions. This contributed to appropriate protective licence conditions being in place in most resettlement cases we inspected. VCS staff undertook regular briefings to practitioners about their roles and responsibilities. However, casework indicated that practitioners needed to place greater emphasis on protecting actual and potential victims throughout sentence delivery.
While we saw some examples where the delivery of public protection work was enabled by collaboration, co-location, and clear communication, this was not universal. Inspectors found inconsistent implementation of services and interventions, raising concerns about the region’s ability to reduce risk and prevent harm.
The regional health and justice team identified links between health inequalities and the subsequent public protection impact. To support effective resettlement, it had established a continuity and resettlement integrated board at HMP Hewell. This was a multi-agency resettlement approach to improving health continuity and engagement in relevant services, including substance misuse and mental health provision. The region had also achieved a 46 per cent increase in community sentence treatment requirements (CSTRs) in the previous 12 months, including enhanced requirements for those with entrenched substance misuse who were at risk of death as a result.
The Regional Outcome and Innovation Fund (ROIF) targeted services for specific cohorts, including Black, Asian, and minority ethnic men, young adults, neurodiverse individuals, and those in custody with finance and debt issues. These services acknowledged links between reducing reoffending and public protection outcomes. For example, Birmingham Settlement had used grant funding to prevent 113 people from becoming homeless and cleared over £3 million of debt. Practitioners praised the 3SC neurodiversity service’s support for people on probation and for boosting their skills in working with this cohort. However, changes to ROIF funding linked to the forthcoming spending review raised concerns about the sustainability of these services.
Electronic monitoring was embedded as a public protection measure for risks linked to alcohol, domestic abuse, and acquisitive crime, with 10 per cent of the caseload subject to a tagging requirement. Enforcement was robust, and installation timeliness improving.
Despite these strengths, delivery of services to keep people safe was sufficient in just 48 per cent of cases we inspected.
Delivery of accredited programmes had been severely disrupted by the national implementation of Building Choices, as well as staffing shortages following facilitator job evaluations and delays in recruitment and vetting. At the point of inspection, only 35 out of 78 facilitator posts were filled. This meant that a large cohort of medium-risk cases were deprioritised for access to programmes. There were also starting delays of six to nine months, and completion rates were too low. In addition, the delivery of structured interventions had been paused. While resourcing demanded a prioritisation approach, it meant that there was a significant cohort of people on probation who were not receiving sufficient intervention. Inspectors also saw insufficient evidence of one-to-one delivery during supervision in too many cases. Consequently, risks linked to domestic abuse, sexual harm, and violence were not being adequately addressed.
Regional assurance activity had improved the use and quality of Commissioned Rehabilitative Services (CRS), but further improvements were needed and 20 out of 51 relevant cases we inspected had insufficient access to appropriate CRS provision. Some services were underused. Communication between practitioners and providers was often poor and reliant on unhelpful digital systems.
Despite the increased volume, CSTR starts were often delayed, records lacked clarity, and reviewing activity was inconsistent. Service capacity, although improving in some areas, was not fully maximised. As a result, people on probation did not consistently receive services to address key factors linked to risk, including substance misuse and mental health.
The enforcement hub was not functioning as intended and was described by practitioners as time consuming and adding little value. A revised practitioner-led model was scheduled for piloting. Current enforcement practice lacked rigour and was often too lenient, resulting in drift and missed opportunities to address non-compliance. In our sample, enforcement was insufficient in 14 out of 36 relevant cases, highlighting the need for a more robust approach.
Accommodation for people on probation was a critical challenge. High living costs in areas such as Herefordshire severely limited access to suitable housing, while Birmingham faced a surge in poor-quality, unregulated, unrestricted accommodation, often linked to organised crime. This was attracting large numbers of transferred cases from across the country. This trend posed serious public protection risks and placed significant strain on local resources. The region had dedicated SPO resource to manage these transfers, strengthen relationships with local authority housing providers, and mitigate associated risks. While some local progress had been made in reducing volumes, persistent non-compliance with the national transfer policy from other parts of the service required attention to address this issue.
Regional recommendations (Back to top)
- Develop practitioners’ confidence and skills in the use of professional curiosity and challenging conversations to identify, analyse, assess, plan, and respond to indicators of risk effectively.
- Ensure that senior probation officers have sufficient capacity and resources to undertake effective management oversight of casework.
- Work with children’s social care services to improve information sharing, joint planning, and joint work to protect children from harm.
- Ensure that mechanisms are in place to provide effective governance, assurance, and oversight of MAPPA-eligible cases at all levels.
HMPPS recommendations (Back to top)
- Develop a national strategic approach to information sharing with the police and children’s services to support regions in achieving consistency and compliance with legislation to obtain and use information to protect the public.
- Reduce vetting delays and address workforce instability by implementing streamlined recruitment processes.
- Provide regions with increased dedicated learning and development resource to enable greater delivery of training and continuous professional development activities for all staff.
Scoring (Back to top)
| Key question | Percentage ‘Yes’ |
| Does assessment focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe? | 49% |
| Does planning focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe? | 58% |
| Does the implementation and delivery of services effectively support the safety of other people? | 48% |
| Does reviewing focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe? | 48% |
Follow-up activity (Back to top)
In line with the recommendations identified, a range of follow-up activity will take place. HM Inspectorate of Probation will work with the region to identify what can be done to guide and support their work, increase knowledge and confidence, and provide a solid foundation for further improvement. The Inspectorate will also seek to share what effective practice looks like by drawing upon inspection findings, identify blockers to progress, and highlight opportunities to improve accountability.
Key contextual facts (Back to top)
| Number of people supervised (on 30 June 2025)2 | 25,343 |
| MAPPA-eligible offenders (on 31 March 2025)3 | 9,916 |
| Victim satisfaction performance SL021 (April 2024 – March 2025)4 | 86.1% |
| Staffing level (staff in post full time equivalent (FTE) 5 | ||
| Senior probation officer (PSO) | Probation officer (PO) | Probation services officer (inc. Professional Qualification in Probation (PQiP)) |
| 101% | 92% | 105% |
| Average Caseload at the point of inspection (FTE) | ||
| PO | PSO (exc. PQiP) | PQiP |
| 37.03 | 39.89 | 22.77 |
| Recall rates (in the 12 months prior to inspection) | 22.63% |
| Average rehabilitation activity requirement (RAR) wait time (in the 12 months prior to inspection) | Not available |
| Percentage of RAR days completed (in the 12 months prior to inspection) | 71% |
| Percentage of accredited programme requirements completed for individuals convicted of a sexual offence (in the 12 months prior to inspection) | 16.54% |
| Percentage of accredited programme requirements completed for individuals not convicted of a sexual offence (in the 12 months prior to inspection) | 31.20% |
| Risk of Serious Harm classification of inspected cases | ||
| Low | Medium | High/very high |
| 7% | 63% | 30% |
Data annexe (Back to top)
Press release (Back to top)
Further information (Back to top)
This inspection was led by HM Inspector Helen Cox, supported by a team of inspectors and colleagues from across the Inspectorate. We would like to thank all those who helped plan and took part in the inspection; without their help and cooperation, the inspection would not have been possible.
Footnotes
- HM Inspectorate of Probation. (2025). National inspection. ↩︎
- https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/offender-management-statistics-quarterly. ↩︎
- https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/multi-agency-public-protection-arrangements-mappa-annual-reports. ↩︎
- https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/community-performance-annual-update-to-march-2025. ↩︎
- Workforce data included in this report come from internal management information and some of these data have been derived from a different data source to the published HMPPS Workforce Statistics bulletin and accompanying Probation Officer Recruitment Annex. The Inspectorate needs access to the latest data available and internal management information is deemed the best source to allow this. As such, there could be discrepancies between the data in this report and the data contained in the publication. ↩︎