National Inspection – April 2025

Foreword from the HM Chief Inspector (Back to top)

This inspection examined the sufficiency of national arrangements across His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) to support, enable, and drive the effective delivery of probation services within regions and probation delivery units (PDUs). 

These national arrangements have a crucial role in enabling successful outcomes in frontline probation work and, while there were some strengths in the work inspected, we saw significant areas for improvement. 

The criminal justice system faces ongoing challenges and, unfortunately, our findings do not demonstrate that the Service is adequately prepared to respond effectively.

As a consequence, we have rated the sufficiency of these arrangements as ‘Requires improvement’ overall.

Leadership needed to be stronger, both in providing consistent messaging and delivering action, in relation to the key objectives of probation supervision: to protect the public and reduce reoffending. These two core objectives should not be delivered as isolated entities but embedded across all delivery outcomes, and we did not see this cohesion at a national level.

This inspection did highlight strengths in relation to information and communication technology (ICT) and digital services, where we saw some impressive work focused on improving delivery on the frontline.

However, we found worrying results in relation to services, where we saw several major shortfalls which were directly impacting upon delivery. The gap between national arrangements and frontline operational need was a cause for concern – reflecting both the low implementation and delivery scores we too often see in core inspection activity, and the case work underpinning this inspection.

There will need to be significant change to ensure sufficient capacity within the Probation Service to meet operational demand and improve the quality of services. This will mean difficult decisions about what is done, and with whom, to ensure those most at risk of further offending and causing serious harm are managed sufficiently. 

Senior leaders across HMPPS have become increasingly aware of this need, and that recruitment of new officers is not in itself enough to improve the quality of probation service delivery.

Additional processes are not needed to improve the management of people on probation; operational stability for well-trained frontline officers, with access to the right resources, and supportive yet robust leadership is required. 

HMPPS have badged 2025 as the year of ‘People and Performance’. At a national level there are some encouraging building blocks in place to deliver against this ambition, but we have not yet seen evidence that policy and strategy are being converted into meaningful operational delivery.

Given the Lord Chancellor’s recent announcements on the future of probation, we believe that this inspection should serve as a helpful and timely independent view of the challenges facing the service, and potential areas of focus.

If it is to succeed, we need national arrangements which do all they can to support, empower, and enable crucial frontline work, and our recommendations spell out the steps that need to be taken to deliver the best possible outcomes for the public.

Ratings (Back to top)

Leadership	Requires improvement
Staffing	Requires improvement
Services	Inadequate
IT and infrastructure	Requires improvement

Background (Back to top)

HMPPS is an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). It is responsible for carrying out sentences given by the courts, in custody and the community. Its core objectives are to protect the public and reduce the risk that people will reoffend. The MoJ sets over-arching delivery outcomes against these two objectives.

Probation services are delivered through 12 regions across England and Wales. These fall under seven HMPPS Areas, each overseen by an Area Executive Director (AED). As of 31 March 2024,[1] 238,993 people were subject to supervision by the Probation Service, including approximately 60,000 who were subject to post-release licence supervision and 106,000 who were subject to an order of the court. The remainder were being supervised in custody before release.

The Probation Service, operated by HMPPS, was formed in 2021 following the unification of the National Probation Service and privately run Community Rehabilitation Companies. Over the last 18 months, there has been a move to a ‘One HMPPS’ leadership model, designed to bring the prison and probation sides of the agency closer and achieve better outcomes for victims, communities and people who have offended. Aligning prison and probation services with HMPPS Areas was intended to improve performance management by decentralising operational decision-making to AEDs. Leaders anticipated that the model would also facilitate more joined-up working between prisons and probation, and externally with important partner organisations.

The move to Areas under One HMPPS was also designed to rebalance national and Area priorities. It aimed to empower regional leaders through a framework known as ‘fixed and flex’, giving them greater liberty to make decisions about service delivery on the frontline. This had the potential to ameliorate outcomes; however, evidence of sufficient improvements to service delivery is yet to be demonstrated.

As part of the One HMMPS design, a restructure of HMPPS headquarters was carried out, with all new directorates operational from September 2024. The Chief Probation Officer now has an operational directorate to support the implementation of policy into practice, with activity taking place centrally to build probation capacity, increasing the efficiency of frontline work and its impact on the rehabilitation of offenders and public protection priorities.

Methodology (Back to top)

This inspection took place between December 2024 and February 2025. We inspected cases from across all 12 probation regions, selecting a proportional number of cases from each region. All cases were inspected remotely and were based on a review of written records of casework. We inspected a total of 165 cases, with 157 inspected against core standards, and eight against adjusted standards. In inspecting cases we applied our case assessment rules and guidance, with adjusted standards for cases subject to Probation Reset[2] where supervision had been suspended within the first eight weeks of the person’s order or licence.

Along with case inspection across all regions, we undertook 66 meetings and focus groups with national, area, and regional leaders in HMPPS to gather evidence against our four national inspection standards: Leadership, Staffing, Services, and Infrastructure.

Our national inspection standards were designed to enable us to comment on the sufficiency of national arrangements to support, enable or drive the effective delivery of probation services by regions and PDUs. We were interested in the relationship between what happens at a national level and how this links to the effective delivery of probation services.

Each of the standards was given a rating on our four-point scale of ‘Outstanding’, ‘Good’, ‘Requires improvement’ or ‘Inadequate’. The ratings were based on a combination of qualitative data, including interviews with staff and other relevant stakeholders, and examining policies and procedures, and quantitative data and information. Our inspection of cases informed our judgements but did not contribute directly to the ratings. This national inspection was completed in line with the published Rules and Guidance, which were subject to consultation before the inspection.[3]

Report conclusions (Back to top)

Leadership – ‘Requires improvement’

Despite an understanding of high workload demands on probation, and action being taken to address this, senior leaders had not done enough to ensure the delivery of quality services. Area business risk registers did not align with the national risk register and did not fully explore all risks affecting probation service delivery. As a result, national action to address local issues was less effective.

The overall vision for probation was not underpinned by a current business plan, and the strategic approach, Target Operating Model for Probation Services, had not been updated since the unification of services in 2021. AEDs are responsible for collating and delivering against Area plans that align with MoJ delivery outcomes. However, a lack of cohesion between priorities was leading to ambiguity across key objectives.

Leadership communications on service priorities did not emphasise reducing reoffending as a crucial factor, despite its importance. Gaps in collaboration between the Probation Operational Directorate and the Rehabilitation Directorate weakened the focus of rehabilitative measures, undermining the quality of services and resources afforded to people on probation and the operational staff delivering probation supervision.

Accountability lines for performance and the quality of delivery were unclear, and national governance structures were failing to improve sentence management quality, particularly regarding public protection.

Much had been delivered at pace over the last 18 months to support the reduction in prison population numbers and in response to critical demand management across the Probation Service.

When implementing policy changes like Standard Determinate Sentence 40 (SDS40)[4] leaders engaged with national agencies to manage prisoner releases effectively. Local arrangements proved pivotal for swift policy delivery and were supported by relationships built across these national structures. However, leaders needed to better engage with key stakeholders to progress effective change on a routine basis, rather than as a responsive measure.

The communication and sequencing of changes to policy and practice were improved through implementation of the Gateway Management System, which was facilitating better change management. Several HMPPS directorates liaised regularly with regional delivery teams, which offered the opportunity for collaboration and helped to influence change.

Data collection and the management information available to inform policymaking were largely a strength, although some gaps remain in diversity analysis.

There was a culture of openness and the ability to critically challenge within national teams. A commitment had been made to embed professional standards and address disparities across the organisation. Tackling unacceptable behaviour, discrimination, harassment, bullying, and victimisation were all priorities to improve the experiences of both staff and people on probation.

Staffing – ‘Requires improvement’

While many centrally initiated projects to address staffing and workload levels took the correct approach, their impact was not yet being felt consistently at PDU and regional level.

We noted that national senior leaders were conversant with many of the issues we have raised recently in PDU and regional inspections and were taking some action to drive improvements regarding staffing. There were some effective links between those leading on this piece of work and strong liaison with regional leaders to build effective support.

We noted some modest improvements in recruitment and staffing levels, and leaders were taking some action to reduce workloads and create more space for practitioners to develop their knowledge and skills to improve practice. We were also encouraged by the emphasis that national leaders placed on improving the working conditions of senior probation officers (SPOs).

Nevertheless, progress remained slow. The shortfall of probation officers in some regions was still high and average workloads for this group remained a problem. We have consistently reported on limited and ineffective management oversight at PDU and regional level and found it again in this inspection. The opportunities for newly qualified and trained staff to implement learning are still often undermined by high workloads and limited numbers of experienced staff to support them.

Services – ‘Inadequate’

This inspection found a number of major shortfalls at a national level, which were directly impacting on service delivery.

In 2023 HMPPS published its Rehabilitation Strategy, which set out its vision for a whole-agency, person-centred approach to ‘build the right systems, promote the right culture and environments, and provide the right rehabilitative services for the right person at the right time, delivered in the right way’. During our inspection we found HMPPS had made limited progress towards achieving these aims. This was reflected in our case inspection findings, which identified that implementation and delivery of services only sufficiently supported desistance in 32 per cent of cases and contributed effectively to keeping people safe in just 18 per cent of cases.

National arrangements for the provision of services were not meeting the needs of regions or the people on probation they managed. We did not find sufficient evidence that the right partnerships were in place or operating effectively at a national level to support service delivery, and we were not assured that both public protection and reducing reoffending were central to the national commissioning and delivery of services.

There were also deficits in the availability and use of data and analysis to inform and enable the delivery of probation services. These included gaps in the analysis of diversity factors and disproportionality, which were attributed to data quality issues and resourcing constraints. There had also been a lack of evaluation of the effectiveness of commissioned services. This had the potential to undermine the quality of decision-making by senior leaders in relation to future service provision and demand management.

Infrastructure and ICT – ‘Requires improvement’

ICT and digital services had some strengths at a national level, but this had not resulted in sufficient improvement in the digital systems used by frontline staff across the probation regions, and there was still much more to be done.

Significant and prolonged underinvestment in both the probation estate and ICT presented a complex and challenging context for national leaders and their teams. The probation estate was made up of a high proportion of leasehold buildings, which presented additional complexities. These included routine maintenance and buildings that required significant renovation to become accessible and modernised to a suitable standard. In some instances, buildings were entirely unsuitable and required replacement sites. ICT systems were dated and time-consuming for staff to navigate and presented technical challenges for national teams working to modernise them.

National leaders fully understood the infrastructure and ICT complexities and challenges blocking effective delivery of probation services. They recognised the impact of poor working environments that leave staff feeling undervalued. The progress achieved at the point of our inspection signified the priority senior leaders have given to achieving modern environments that meet the needs of staff, stakeholders and people on probation. The ongoing commitment, budget and plan for the next financial year were set out to continue progressing the work required. While this is positive, if the service is to achieve the full scale of improvements needed, ongoing access to the necessary funds will be critical. 

National ICT arrangements were underpinned by a comprehensive plan and clear strategic direction. Much had been achieved in terms of improvements to systems, which created better consistency and efficiency for frontline practice on some tasks. All probation service buildings had access to Wi-Fi, which supported probation practitioners and communication. Work was also taking place to design and develop a new risk assessment system based on up-to-date technology and the latest evidence base. There was centralised support for regions to manage the ICT needs of the large numbers of new starter trainee probation officers. Staff engagement and consultation in the development of new systems was well embedded and meant that the experience of frontline practitioners was being drawn upon.

Too many buildings were inaccessible, which was unacceptable. Improvements needed for unpaid work (UPW) facilities had not been given sufficient priority. Arrangements for the new national estates team were taking time to embed, which made it difficult for some regions and PDUs to access support. In addition, arrangements to control and mitigate risks to safety at work in relation to some critical aspects, including stress at work, were not adequate.

Recommendations (Back to top)

HMPPS should:

1. Produce a coherent business plan and review the Target Operating Model to ensure it supports the delivery of effective probation services.
2. Ensure significant risks to probation service delivery are identified and acted upon effectively.
3. Collaborate effectively with senior leaders in the police and local government to implement sufficient work across relevant agencies in relation to domestic abuse and the safeguarding of children.
4. Develop digital systems that enable practitioners to assess, plan, deliver, and record their work in a timely way, and that support the sharing of information with other agencies involved in protecting victims from harm.
5. Provide regional leaders with greater discretion to commission and contract-manage organisations that meet the needs of people on probation.
6. Ensure commissioning activity is appropriately informed by an accurate and comprehensive analysis of the needs, risks, and protected characteristics of people on probation.
7. Seek investment in and prioritise the remediation of unsuitable buildings and estates, including unpaid work sites, to ensure that they are all safe and accessible.
8. Ensure all health and safety hazards are identified and controlled, so far as is reasonably practicable, including work-related stress.

Leadership (Back to top)

Strengths:

• AEDs were accountable in principle for delivering Area plans that set out how they would achieve the service’s overarching vision and long-term strategic outcomes. They produced yearly business plans that included their objectives for public protection and reducing reoffending. These objectives aligned with the MoJ’s delivery priorities and included overarching objectives. They promoted a cohesive service and provided a framework for holding areas to account.
• National communication arrangements with partner agencies have sometimes been effective. At the point of implementing SDS40 for instance, national leaders engaged with the police, and housing and treatment providers at a national level to mobilise regional support in managing the release of offenders from prison. Leaders rightly pointed to this as a success, and there was undoubtedly an opportunity to build on this in the future. We saw regionally that local arrangements were paramount to delivering this policy change at pace. That was supported by the work of leaders within the national HMPPS structure to encourage support across different agencies.
• Leaders had made welcome improvements to the way the service managed policy and practice changes. The Gateway Management System had been implemented to support and plot change demand. Incorporating both national change programmes and Area projects, it enabled sequencing and dosage to manage change more effectively, reducing the risk of overloading frontline staff. AEDs and regional teams were also able to manage change, offer constructive feedback to national teams, and provide challenge when required. This led to improved links between national and regional teams. 
• Collation of data to inform policymaking and service delivery was largely a strength. This included data on diversity and protected characteristic information, although there were some gaps in the analysis of this overall. Management information was available centrally and there was investment in ensuring accurate and reliable assurance and performance information was available to inform local decision-making.
• Strategy, performance, and corporate delivery directorate teams were impressive, and activity included the relaunch of professional standards. There was a clear commitment to driving up the quality of service delivery and upholding professional standards. Alongside this, the disparities unit acted as a conduit for disseminating information and data to inform policy decisions and drive cultural competency across the organisation. National inclusion priorities relating to race had been identified across staffing, prisons, and probation. The focus was lean, with one objective per strand of work, but was proportionate to the resourcing allocated. 
• There was a national commitment to identify and address discrimination, harassment, bullying, and victimisation across the service. In the recent restructuring of functions through HMPPS, the Tackling Unacceptable Behaviour Unit (TUBU) was ringfenced, which was a powerful positive message. Leaders monitored access to their helpline, mediation, and investigation services. The helpline received a slightly higher numbers of calls from probation colleagues as a proportion of the employee group than other sectors across the organisation. Future services included a planned move to focused behaviour interventions and practical support, where needed, across probation.

Areas for improvement: 

• The overarching vision for the probation service, delivering alongside the prison service as part of HMPPS, was that it ‘protects the public, maintains safe and secure prisons, reduces the risk that people will reoffend and helps people to live law abiding and positive lives’. This overall vision was underpinned by two long-term strategic outcomes: protecting the public from serious offenders and reducing reoffending. While proven reoffending rates declined at a steady rate over the 10 years up to March 2020, they have increased again over the last four years, in part because of delays in processing convictions through the courts following Covid-19.⁴ Assessment and planning for desistance are where we often see higher rates of sufficiency within our core inspection activity, although implementation and delivery are largely insufficient to support desistance. Keeping people safe remains a major cause for concern.
• Risk can never be fully eliminated, but in our inspection of casework, which was used to inform this report, we consistently found gaps in the assessment, planning and management of identified risk, and insufficient action to keep people safe within generic caseloads.
• Serious further offence (SFO) charges among offenders managed under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) have risen by 33 per cent from the year before, to their highest level since 2018, with SFO convictions rising by 15 per cent among this group. SFO notifications for all offenders, regardless of whether they were subject to MAPPA, also increased by 33 per cent in 2023/2024 compared to the previous year. That was concerning and warranted further investigation to understand whether there were links to the quality of risk assessment and management.
• Given our consistent inspection findings and the increase in both offending and serous further offending, probation services are not yet achieving their overarching vision.
• There was no current clear business plan for delivery across HMPPS. The 2024/2025 plan could not be published due to the change in government, and the 2025/2026 plan was being drafted. The Target Operating Model for Probation Services dates back to unification in 2021 and has not been reviewed since then. A Probation Roadmap was being drafted to demonstrate the journey travelled since unification and outline future priorities, but it had not yet been published at the time of this inspection. AEDs had formulated their own delivery priorities based on the MoJ’s key outcomes; however, the absence of a published plan for the last year risked a lack of national cohesion.
• The Rehabilitation Directorate and the Probation Operational Directorate were not sufficiently joined up. Leaders with responsibility for the assurance of rehabilitation work held the view that public protection received more emphasis on the frontline, despite inspections routinely reporting that desistance was managed more robustly than public protection.
• The lines of accountability for operational delivery and performance between AEDs and senior leaders were not clear. Alongside this, the freedoms afforded to AEDs through an approach known as ‘fixed and flex’ was not always fully understood, with senior leaders sometimes giving mixed messages.
• National governance arrangements were not leading to improvements in the quality of sentence management delivery across the Probation Service. Non-executive directors on the HMPPS agency board had rightly commissioned additional audit and risk assurance committee meetings in response to their concerns about the quality of work to protect the public. However, only limited improvements were being reported through assurance activity. The HMPPS leadership team had good insight into major issues relating to delivery and should, in principle, have been directing improvements through the AEDs and a senior operational leadership team. However, neither leadership structure was delivering better direction and control of organisational risks in the Probation Service, most concerningly in relation to work to protect the public.
• National leaders were not sufficiently engaged with all relevant strategic partners, including the Parole Board and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners. More positively, the national rehabilitation board included representatives from across government, including the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Housing, and NHS England. This had supported national initiatives to make services available within regions, including DWP representatives in probation offices, funding for community accommodation services, and links through the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) pathway.
• As an inspectorate, we have repeatedly raised concerns about the impossible workload demands on probation staff since unification and the impact of this on the quality of work being delivered, including insufficient action to keep people safe. To the credit of senior national leaders, they have recognised that recruitment alone is not enough to sustain the workload that probation is required to manage and that more must be done, albeit with this shift in focus only happening in the last 12 months. Additional measures to manage demand on probation resources remain ongoing.
• Area risk registers did not fully explore the risks to probation service delivery and staff working conditions. In terms of alignment with the HMPPS Leadership Team risk registers, just over half of the identified risks at an Area level aligned with those recognised nationally. This resulted in gaps in strategic oversight and overall organisational risk management.

Staffing (Back to top)

Strengths: 

• The focus on recruitment and retention and the improved and strengthening support for SPOs were identified as priority areas by the Chief Probation Officer. 
• Several initiatives had helped national leaders build a more informed picture of capacity and better predict the needs of services at regional and PDU level. As a consequence, national senior leaders agreed to increase target staffing levels between March 2022 and March 2024 by almost 2,000 probation officers. 
• There had been a gradual increase in the number of qualified probation officers over the previous three years, with a net 11 per cent increase between September 2023 and September 2024. There had been a strong drive by senior leaders on recruitment to the probation officer trainee programme, Professional Qualification in Probation (PQiP), which also consistently exceeded its target in the same period. 
• There was an appropriately strong emphasis on both recruitment and retention by senior leaders, with appropriate focus from the HMPPS People board and links to the National Operations Stability Panel. This included several initiatives designed to improve insight, such as research into the key reasons for staff leaving, analysis of high and low retention regions and PDUs, and more analysis of post-qualification experiences. The introduction of the retention toolkit was a useful initial step to help regions manage staff turnover. 
• The introduction of more flexible recruitment routes had been positive, and this year’s launch of the probation services officer apprenticeship programme aims to further increase the capability of this staff group. Recruitment had also been supported by a review of processes and improvements in campaigns, including the ‘extraordinary jobs’ advertising initiative and a move to implement a continuous recruitment campaign known as ‘Always On’ at the end of March 2025. 
• Some regions have embraced the introduction of central recruitment support in November 2024, which has helped reduce their burden while enabling some local influence and control. 
• Probation Reset was introduced formally in July 2024 following a six-week lead-in. It is a mandatory organisational policy to alleviate workload in the face of increasing pressure on probation practitioners. Its stated aim is also to focus probation work on the period when it can have the greatest impact on people on probation. Modelling to estimate the impact of the provision was undertaken in advance, and it is estimated that the policy has affected around 40,000 cases to date. This was delivered at pace and is now being incorporated into business as usual.
• The use of a prioritisation framework and Probation Reset have helped reduce workloads for many staff. The workload measurement tool showed that average national workload levels for probation officers had fallen from 120 per cent to 106 per cent in the 12 months leading up to this inspection. 
• There was a good range of training and programmes designed to support and develop staff, particularly through the design faculty. Good mechanisms were in place to integrate and evaluate these, along with appropriate links to regional teams.
• We saw a strong emphasis on developing middle managers, in particular the SPO grade. The completion of the learning and management training by 76 per cent of eligible SPOs was an encouraging start, and the development of a framework to support countersigning and management oversight, with the support in the future of a new management system, is welcome. 
• Probation-based support work by the improvement support group was positive and, while longer-term analysis of its efficacy was necessary, feedback from the SPOs directly affected was positive, despite the relatively small number of PDUs supported to date. 
• Development of a mandatory professional register for probation officers has progressed, with over 4,000 registered at the time of this inspection. Defining professional registration standards, and encouraging personal responsibility for professional development, are likely positive outcomes and the project may aid retention in the long term. 

Areas for improvement: 

• Despite a welcome increase in the number of frontline staff, there continued to be significant shortfalls against the target levels for qualified probation officers. Target staffing had increased in the previous three years as leaders gained a better understanding of service needs. However, at the time of the inspection there was a shortfall of 25 per cent of probation officers, despite an increase of 11 per cent in the 12 months to September 2024. 
• Overall, the attrition rate nationally for probation staff was 10 per cent. The rate for probation officers was lower, at eight per cent (with a four and half per cent resignation rate), but this was still a significant concern.
• Sickness levels continued to be high at almost 13 days on average a year, rising to 15.5 days for probation officers, and were indicative of a service under significant pressure. 
• Despite some reductions in probation officer and probation services officer workloads across our core inspections over the last year (Kent, Surrey and Sussex, East of England, and Yorkshire and the Humber), around half of all staff reported that their workloads were unmanageable. Workloads for probation officers in particular remained too high. 
• Despite the current focus on improving support for SPOs, management oversight and the wider role of SPOs remain a substantial deficit. Across each of the three regions we have inspected in the last 12 months, we have found that management oversight was sufficient in an average of only 20 per cent of cases. It was sufficient in only 13 per cent of the cases we inspected on this inspection.
• Some tension remained between nationally driven recruitment and the regions. While some regional leaders reported a positive impact of the hybrid approach since November 2024, others with greater recruitment challenges felt their ability to recruit flexibly to meet their unique needs was hampered. This was also the case in relation to PQiP recruitment. 
• Questions remained about the effectiveness of training on frontline practice. Across our inspections to date, practitioners responding to our staff survey consistently claimed they had the skills, knowledge and experience to manage their allocated cases (at least 88 per cent ‘mostly’ or ‘always’ in each region). However, our analysis of casework would suggest that, too often, this was not the case. 
• Ensuring training was undertaken by practitioners and that it converted to effective practice remained an ongoing challenge. The need to increase practice-based and face-to-face training was, in many cases, hampered by continuing high workloads and related pressures. 

Services (Back to top)

Strengths: 

• The national Community Accommodation Service (CAS) team were leading effective work to house people released from prison, through three tiers of temporary accommodation. National leaders had regular contact and positive engagement with regional teams at a variety of levels, from frontline staff up to AEDs. They had introduced digital tools to simplify and speed up the referral process for probation practitioners. They were responsive to the diverse needs of people referred for accommodation provision, with a particular focus on addressing disproportionality for women, who were often placed in prisons and approved premises far from their home area. 
• A recommissioning programme for Commissioned Rehabilitative Services (CRS) contracts was underway and appropriately taking account of lessons learned from the first-generation contracts. However, the new contracts were not scheduled to begin until 2027 at the earliest. Recommissioning intentions were based on a ‘whole person’ approach, which intended to enable future providers to deliver services more holistically across a range of pathways. Decision-making was being informed by input from regional teams, third sector organisations and an expert reference group, which included representatives from across government and people with lived experience. 
• National leaders in the Education, Skills, and Employment team had improved their working relationships with the DWP, which was supporting people on probation to access benefits and employment advocacy. HMPPS had also commissioned the Creating Future Opportunities programme to secure positive employment outcomes for individuals with the most complex needs. The Probation Service was represented on the recently launched Employment Advisory Councils, which brought prison, probation and the DWP together with local employers to provide employment opportunities for ex-offenders.
• A new accredited programme was launched in November 2024 to reduce the complexity and increase the effectiveness of community-based programmes. Drawing on national and international evidence, Building Choices was developed for people with a range of offending behaviours, including domestic abuse and sexual offences. The programme focused on improving participants’ emotional self-regulation, problem-solving, and relationship skills, using a person-focused, strengths-based approach. Delivery methodology included consideration for participants with learning disabilities and challenges, and safety work would continue with victims of domestic abuse perpetrators. It was encouraging that initial feedback from staff in test areas had been positive. 
• The national OPD pathway was an example of effective partnership working with targeted groups of people on probation. It was jointly managed, funded and commissioned by HMPPS and NHS England to provide evidence-based, psychologically informed interventions and consultancy to a high-risk, high-harm cohort that met the clinical threshold for a diagnosis of personality disorder. To complement this provision some approved premises had been commissioned to operate as psychologically informed planned environments (PIPEs). The national OPD pathway team sits in the Health and Wellbeing division and provides training and guidance to support probation practitioners to make appropriate referrals.
• Following the success of some regionally commissioned and funded pilots of the primary care Mental Health Treatment Requirement, NHS funding had been secured to expand the delivery of this intervention to reach more people on probation who reported mental health conditions, although some regions continued to experience long waiting lists related to high demand. 

Areas for improvement: 

• It was of significant concern that HMPPS did not have a national public protection strategy in place to articulate a clear vision for this critical aspect of probation service delivery.
• Training was needed to improve frontline practitioners’ understanding and effective use of actuarial tools to predict seriously harmful future offending and inform risk of harm assessments. However, work was still in progress to deliver the digital tools to support this.
• There was evidence of strong and supportive relationships between regional heads of public protection and the national teams in the Public Protection Directorate, oversight of which had been allocated to an AED to provide a prisons and probation perspective. However, some regions continued to face barriers to adequate and timely information-sharing with the police and children’s social care teams to inform safeguarding assessments and risk management work. This was reflected in our case inspections, where less than a quarter of relevant cases contained evidence of effective multi-agency work, including information-sharing in respect of safeguarding children, and less than a third of relevant cases evidenced effective joint-working and information-sharing in relation to domestic abuse.
• Concerningly, HMPPS senior leaders were not meeting the multi-agency expectations and accountability of strategic leaders set out in the national Working Together guidance. They asserted that issues would be most appropriately resolved through local partnership arrangements. 
• The first aim of the CRS provision’s aims and objectives stipulated the need to ensure services were‘responsive to diverse needs as well as evidence of disproportionality in the CJS’. However, the MoJ team responsible for the Equalities Monitoring Tool had not been commissioned to evaluate any of the existing CRS provision or provide analysis to inform decision-making by the CRS recommissioning programme about future provision.
• Existing CRS provision was not meeting the needs of people on probation. The service level measures built into the first-generation CRS contracts by national teams related simply to the timeliness of initial appointments, assessments and start dates. There were no measures to mandate or incentivise subsequent delivery of interventions. Consequently, providers focused their resources on achieving a high number of starts and delivered a low number of completions.
• Quality measures were only included in 28 of the original 140 contracts, meaning most providers were not subject to any formal independent quality assurance. After education, training and employment contracts ended in 2023, this reduced to 22 contracts. Improvement plans could only be triggered if a provider failed to meet their service level and/or quality measures, making it difficult for the national Commissioning Strategy Team or regional Community Integration Teams to remedy sub-standard service delivery. Additionally, the lack of flexibility written into the first-generation CRS contracts prevented additions or amendments to meet any changes in business need.
• The monthly CRS National Delivery and Strategy Board provided regular opportunities for regional heads of community integration to engage with the national CRS commissioning team. However, there appeared to be a disconnect between the perceived and actual level of delegated authority afforded to regions in contract management and commissioning. 
• The national Evidence and Insights team had a remit to ‘inform operational delivery, enhance performance and inform strategic decision making’ across HMPSS headquarters and operational teams. However, their primary engagement with operational teams was in prisons. The support they offered to frontline probation practitioners was limited to a ‘self-service’ segmentation tool, some workshops, and an online catalogue of resources focusing on evidenced-based practice and primary research projects.
• The national segmentation tool enabled prison and probation caseload data to be filtered by location. It included the functionality to make some comparisons between offence types, sentence length and some diversity factors. However, the tool had limitations, as it was unable to present live data and instead provided a snapshot of the caseload, which was updated on a six-monthly basis. It identified the number of individuals who had declared learning disabilities and challenges, but it did not identify people who had declared a neurodivergent condition. 
• The Equalities Monitoring Tool was created to identify disproportionality in outcomes for people on probation who had declared certain protected characteristics. However, its data on disability was unreliable and no data on neurodiversity was available to analyse. The tool did not provide any analysis of disproportionality in sentence completions, or enforcement decisions. Consequently, national and regional leaders lacked the necessary insight to understand and address inequities experienced by people on probation with protected characteristics.
• Regional teams relied on their Performance and Quality teams to manipulate, enhance and analyse any data provided by national teams to make it useful for their needs, but the quality of this locally collected data and analysis was subject to the skill set of staff within each region’s Performance and Quality team. 
• Nationally, delivery of accredited programmes was beset by long backlogs of people on probation waiting to start group work. This situation had been ongoing for a number of years. Contributing factors included: the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, ineffective targeting and high non-attendance rates, depleted programme facilitator numbers, and reduced group room capacity since the unification of probation services. The issue was brought to the national rehabilitation board in 2023, which made a decision to prioritise accredited programme delivery to newly sentenced cases and existing cases assessed as being the highest risk of harm. The board also decided that delivery of accredited programmes must take priority over structured interventions. These interventions have now been effectively suspended due to demand management in a number of regions, despite being an option for delivery under a Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR).
• National leaders had not provided sufficient direction to frontline staff on the delivery of structured work with people on probation. The existing suite of structured interventions and probation practitioner toolkits were not based on robust evidence to demonstrate their effectiveness. There were no firm plans for alternative interventions that could be used to evidence RAR delivery. In almost half (54 out of 109) of the cases we inspected that included a RAR, no interventions had been delivered at all.
• Innovations in electronic monitoring technology had expanded its use to include alcohol monitoring and GPS tracking. However, to date, a series of third-party providers had failed to deliver an acceptable service in terms of reliably installing tagging equipment or providing relevant and timely data on monitoring and breaches. Restrictions on who had alcohol monitoring equipment fitted had needed to be introduced for a short period, and it was estimated it would take a further six months to fully implement the new provider’s systems. 
• With the exception of the OPD pathway, which has worked with probation for over 15 years, the national Health and Wellbeing division worked primarily with prison-based functions and approved premises and had only recently established a community team to provide support for probation regions. They had also recently incorporated the Drug and Alcohol Group, which had developed positive strategic relationships with substance misuse providers and partners in the NHS and Department of Health and Social Care. Health and justice coordinators had been recruited in each region to promote continuity of care between custody and the community. However, this role was relatively new, and we did not see its impact in our case inspections, which evidenced low rates of intervention delivery to address drug and alcohol misuse to reduce risk of reoffending and harm. 

Infrastructure and ICT (Back to top)

Strengths: 

• Improvement to the facilities that support effective delivery of probation services began under the Probation Reform Programme. Most of the probation estate, except for some premises used for UPW, had been assessed to determine whether it was fit for modern probation delivery. National leaders had devised a plan to modernise some of the estate through a combination of building works, maintenance and building replacements. Some progress had been made. Over the course of four years, some 64 buildings had undergone major refurbishment and a further 65 had been redecorated or refurnished. 
• National leaders had produced an estates design guide. This set out appropriate minimum standards for refurbishing buildings. An equalities impact assessment had been completed to underpin the guide, and it included reference to accessibility requirements for protected characteristics. 
• There were effective arrangements for governing the delivery of facilities management contracts. The structures and scrutiny processes in place ensured compliance audits were done and identified emerging supplier issues, which were responded to quickly.
• National leaders had effective oversight of some matters relating to the safety of staff. Dashboards and other reporting systems provided clear information on the provision of first aid equipment, the employees who were trained in first aid, and fire and panic alarm testing in probation offices.
• Staff from the national Digital, Technology, and Data teams that we spoke to were driven by a shared value to support frontline staff. They were working to a comprehensive service transformation business plan. Since unification, they had arranged for Wi-Fi to be installed in all probation offices, which supported flexible delivery of services. National teams had taken on responsibility for providing ICT equipment to large volumes of new trainee probation officers. This had led to much better reliability and reduced the burden on frontline leaders.
• Systems included the necessary IT infrastructure required to reliably plan, deliver and record their work, and communication systems allowed access and information-sharing as required. There was robust governance of access to IT equipment, and in the last two years, significant improvements were evidenced in the service provided to regions and PDUs. Improvements to telephony systems enabled staff to access advanced Microsoft Teams phone provision in 60 per cent of probation sites, and a plan to migrate the remaining sites to Teams was on target to be completed by the end of 2025. The improved telephony enabled staff to communicate more efficiently, with all phone calls made through Teams.
• ICT training was being made available to all staff by national teams. Several hundred employees had completed brief training on Teams and Power-BI. This had helped them to develop skills in using the range of tools available in their roles. Post-learning feedback increased their confidence in using the systems after they had completed the training.
• A range of assisted technology solutions were available and could be accessed remotely. The MoJ Digital Accessibility team offered advice and training for departments across HMPPS. 
• The development of systems involved routine consultation and collaboration with frontline staff and people on probation. In the 12 months before our inspection, probation digital teams had involved 911 staff and 55 people on probation in research, using a range of methods. They also had robust review and evaluation processes.
• The integration of a series of satellite systems had created measurable efficiencies with practitioners’ time. These were developed with contributions from staff who were directly involved in this work. Examples included the use of the ‘UPW assessment’, to ‘consider a recall’, ‘allocate a person’, and ‘create and vary a licence’.
• While some staff described these satellite systems as clunky, the digital teams had a business plan that set out how they would develop micro-services. In the short term, this involved improving digitalised systems in a way that worked with the technical abilities of the current case management system (nDelius); in the longer term, they would connect these tools to a new system called ‘Manage a Person on Probation’. This would provide one launch page for staff accessing probation case management and risk assessment systems.
• Senior national leaders were driving the development of ARNS as a replacement for OASys, to create risk assessments, risk management plans and sentence plans. The new system was intended to enable more accurate risk assessments, informed by actuarial data on reoffending. It was also hoped that ARNs would enable practitioners to plan, deliver and record work in a timelier way. A full roll-out of ARNS was scheduled for completion by autumn 2026.
• A small-scale project delivered by the Better Outcomes Through Linked Data project was underway and had the potential to develop the way systems enable staff to access and share information across agencies.
• Policies and practice guidance were available to frontline staff through a system called EQuiP. There was robust governance of the accuracy of its content, and national teams monitored and provided data on usage to regions to highlight the importance of the system as a source of information for practice. An average of 9,000 users per month were recorded. National leaders were acting on feedback from staff about the how the system could be difficult to use and were developing an AI search engine in response.

Areas for improvement: 

• There has been significant under-investment in the estate for a prolonged period. This meant the estate included numerous unsuitable buildings that had been poorly maintained, and the number of inaccessible buildings was unacceptable. Numerous buildings across England and Wales required major refurbishment. Leaders had prioritised locations for refurbishment, but the pace at which this could reasonably be achieved was lengthy and depended on significant additional funding from central government. 
• Senor leaders were monitoring risks to health and safety but risk assessments on some hazards, including legionella and work-related stress, were not suitable and sufficient. It appeared that risks were not always being controlled via the national risk register so far as was reasonably practicable.
• In some parts of the estate there were overdue repairs relating to water, gas, electricity and hot water heaters. Senior leaders told us this was due to difficulties in obtaining replacements parts for very old systems in some buildings.
• Feedback from staff was that the major refurbishment of some buildings and not others had created an inequitable provision, often within the same region or PDU, which left some staff feeling less valued at work. Communication from those responsible for maintaining and upgrading buildings needed to improve.
• Not all regions understood who to contact and how to access support from the national estates team, which had restructured in April 2024 into the new Estates, Safety and Litigation Directorate. This created additional work for those in regions and PDUs who were trying to navigate the system.
• Senior leaders had not given the same level of priority to UPW estates, safety and health as other parts of the community estate (Approved Premises or Probation Contact Centres). More attention to UPW sites was needed to ensure arrangements were safe and accessible to all, with adequate access to welfare provision. 
• A lone working policy and home visit risk assessment and guidance were available to staff. Work was ongoing to digitalise the home visit risk assessment process to monitor compliance with the policy and create efficiencies for staff needing to complete the risk assessment. Personal safety devices for remote working had been issued to staff; however, more work was needed to mandate use of the device across regions and PDUs.
• National systems for monitoring the impact of work-related stress were not leading to it being controlled effectively enough or soon enough. Sickness absence related to mental health accounted for 50 per cent of all sickness, which was having a stark impact on PDUs and regions. Regional wellbeing leads had been appointed and a revised work-related stress framework had been created. 
• There had been significant underinvestment in technology and digital systems for a long time. OASys was approximately 25 years old and nDelius approximately 12 years old. The age of these systems presented technical barriers to the developments that could be achieved.
• Some improvements had been made to the nDelius case management system to make tasks more efficient and less time-consuming. But there remained a pressing need for continued investment in modernising the Probation Service’s digital infrastructure to better support practitioners. This was particularly important in reducing complexity, improving how risk-related information was shared between prison, probation and other key agencies, and supporting the workforce resource and capacity demands on frontline practitioners. 
• Access to technology and systems to enable safe remote working for UPW staff needed improvement. Plans to pilot and improve systems and accessibility for UPW staff were yet to begin and depended on future funding being secured.
• Not everyone who needed to access the Violent and Sex Offender Register (ViSOR) was able to do so. The service had experienced significant challenges in obtaining the volume of police vetting required to enable all relevant staff to access the system. The barriers that prevented it from fully embedding the ViSOR system in practice resulted in a missed opportunity to improve information-sharing about the most high-risk people on probation and work to keep people safe.
• The Workload Measurement Tool provided workload data for probation officers, probation services officers and PQiP officers only. There was no system in place to enable regions and PDUs to make decisions on how to use resources and manage workloads for other operational staff roles.
• Access to more advanced Power-BI training and investment in regional performance and quality staff development were needed. Performance and Quality teams in the regions needed to source their own external funding for Power-BI training to develop the skills of their teams and support regional staff to make the best use of national management information data. This was despite an underspend in the learning and development budget at a national level. 

Annexe One: Summary of findings from casework inspection (Back to top)

Court work

The pre-sentence information and advice provided to court supports its decision-making.

Key question	Percentage ‘Yes’
Is the pre-sentence information and advice provided to court sufficiently analytical and personalised to the individual, supporting the court’s decision-making?	36%

• Court report authors were generally analytical and considered factors linked to desistance and risk as well as the impact of offending behaviour on victims. The voice of the person on probation was captured in 86 per cent of the reports we inspected, and report authors were responsive to the individual’s diversity needs and personal circumstances in a reasonable majority of cases (76 per cent). Report authors sometimes liaised with other agencies, including mental health teams and substance misuse services. 78 per cent of reports made appropriate sentencing proposals.
• However, the quality of advice to court was undermined by inconsistencies in the availability and use of timely, comprehensive information on domestic abuse and child safeguarding. Indications of domestic abuse were present in 62 per cent of court reports inspected, and indications of child safeguarding concerns in two-thirds of cases. Disappointingly, however, sufficient information about domestic abuse was only obtained in just over half (54 per cent) of reports we inspected. Information on child safeguarding was obtained in around half of relevant cases (49 per cent). This is a critical omission in the production of quality advice to court and accurate assessment of risk. There were several issues underpinning these findings, ranging from report authors failing to make any enquiry, to delays or obstructions in receiving a response from partner agencies. Even in cases where the information was present, there were deficiencies in the way it was used to inform court work.
• Although inspectors saw several examples of good-quality short format reports, some complex cases were sentenced based on less comprehensive report types. These were completed at speed, and often lacked critical details about risk and protected characteristics. Inspectors also saw several breach reports and responses to supervision updates from practitioners that did not include up-to-date enquiries. These documents did not adequately analyse changes in circumstances or emerging risks and were not consistently informed by intelligence from third-party organisations.
• Worryingly, just 36 per cent of the court work we inspected nationally was sufficiently analytical and personalised to the individual. Information-sharing between key stakeholders needed to be timelier to address this issue. In addition, court staff needed to use and analyse third-party information better, to inform their assessment of risk, and to consider protected characteristics more effectively.

Resettlement

Resettlement work is timely, personalised, and coordinated, addressing the individual’s resettlement needs and supporting their integration into the community.

Key question	Percentage ‘Yes’
Is resettlement timely, personalised, and coordinated, and does it address key resettlement needs and support the individual’s integration into the community?	42%

• Good-quality resettlement activity in the inspected sample was underpinned by effective pre-release communication between the practitioner, the individual in custody and other professionals. Clear and timely information-sharing about relevant risks and needs enabled some community-based practitioners to develop effective licence conditions and release plans.
• We found that resettlement activity supported the individual’s integration into the community in too few of the cases we inspected (42 per cent). Information-sharing between prison-based staff and the COM was sufficient in just 60 per cent of cases. A variety of factors were responsible for this, including ineffective communication routes and staff turnover.
• In several cases in the inspected sample, the person on probation was subject to End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL)^[5] and SDS40 and subsequently released earlier than planned. Inspectors were encouraged by positive work undertaken in some short-term custodial cases. In other cases, however, these short timescales for pre-release activity had a detrimental effect on the quality of resettlement work. In only half of cases did the community practitioner ensure a proportionate level of contact with the prisoner before release. The practitioner sufficiently identified key risk of harm issues in just 22 out of 49 relevant cases, and identified relevant desistance needs pre-release in only around half of cases. This made it more difficult for these individuals to access appropriate services in custody and resulted in inspectors seeing concerning examples of people being released homeless and without access to appropriate community-based support.
• We inspected 19 cases subject to Probation Reset. Eight of those were inspected against adjusted standards. Inspectors noted deficits in the way that people on probation were prepared to enter reset. For example, they were given limited information beyond a basic letter, which often provided insufficient signposting to onward support. Complex risks and needs were not adequately planned for in several cases, including in some cases assessed as high risk with indicators of domestic abuse present. In cases that were inspected against adjusted standards, there was often insufficient time for practitioners to deliver meaningful interventions to address relevant risks, and agencies were not sufficiently coordinated to support delivery.
• Learning from serious further offence reviews has included the need for robust transfer activity. However, in the cases we inspected, there were deficits in transfer practice. These included poor communication between areas, delays in completing actions and ineffective escalation processes. Worryingly, these concerns were a feature in several cases subject to reset. It is crucial that the organisation review the implications of transfer activity at the point when a case becomes eligible for reset. This will ensure that appropriate reactive management can be undertaken by the correct PDU.

Assessment

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

Key question	Percentage ‘Yes’
Does assessment focus sufficiently on engaging the person on probation?	52%
Does assessment focus sufficiently on the factors linked to offending and desistance?	69%
Does assessment focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe?	25%

• The assessment of desistance factors was the strongest area of work across all stages of casework. We found that 69 per cent of all assessments were sufficient in this area. Practitioners consistently identified factors linked to offending across a reasonable majority of cases the inspected under the core standards (74 per cent).
• In six out of eight relevant cases inspected against the adjusted standards, the practitioner had identified the offending-related factors that required ongoing support, indicating that this assessment activity can be done at pace when required.
• In contrast, however, only 25 per cent of inspected assessments focused sufficiently on keeping other people safe. Practitioners had access to sufficient domestic abuse information in 66 per cent of cases, but we found some examples of disparity in access to and quality of information from the police across the country. Even in situations where domestic abuse information was available, however, it was used to assess risk effectively in just 39 per cent of relevant cases.
• The handling of child safeguarding information was also concerning. Good-quality information was available to practitioners in less than half of relevant cases (47 per cent) and was used to inform the assessment in just 28 per cent of cases. Worryingly, despite learning from high profile serious further offences, there were 13 cases where relevant information was not used to assess the suitability of a curfew.
• Inspectors found that one in five assessments were inaccurate or unclear. Examples included changes in risk without an appropriate evidence base, a lack of holistic assessment of previous behaviours and a failure to assess risk to all relevant victim groups. Inspectors were also concerned to note several cases that did not have a risk assessment despite indications that one was required.

Planning

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

Key question	Percentage ‘Yes’
Does planning focus sufficiently on engaging the person on probation?	44%
Does planning focus sufficiently on reducing reoffending and supporting desistance?	64%
Does planning focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe?	38%

• Planning for desistance reflected offending-related factors and set out the services most likely to reduce reoffending in 64 per cent of cases. This could have been improved in some cases by more consideration of the individual’s strengths and sources of support.
• We did not see collaborative planning that engaged people on probation in enough cases (44 per cent). The impact of the individual’s protected characteristics and personal circumstances, which might have been identified at the assessment stage, was not adequately planned for in around half of cases. This resulted in practitioners often overlooking how key factors such as disability, ethnicity, employment, and language barriers required them to adapt their practice to promote engagement and compliance.
• There were concerns about the way in which people on probation were engaged in planning activity in the cases subject to adjusted standards. Inspectors expected practitioners to have meaningful discussions with individuals about the implications of Probation Reset, considering factors such as diversity and the individual’s motivation to engage with services voluntarily after contact ended. There were no cases inspected where this work was assessed as sufficient. Plans in these cases were often unrealistic given the time available and limited consideration was given to contact ending until reset was imminent, leaving people on probation unprepared.
• Too few plans focused sufficiently on keeping people safe (39 per cent), and 40 per cent of plans failed to address identified risk factors. There were deficits in links made to the work of other agencies. This is a concern, given that 17 per cent of cases inspected were subject to MAPPA, with five of those managed at Level 2. Only 67 out of 162 relevant contingency plans sufficiently addressed factors that could escalate risk and set out appropriate responsive activity.

Implementation and delivery

High-quality well-focused, personalised, and coordinated services are delivered, engaging the person on probation.

Key question	Percentage ‘Yes’
Is the sentence or post-custody period implemented effectively with a focus on engaging the person on probation?	47%
Does the implementation and delivery of services support desistance effectively?	32%
Does the implementation and delivery of services support the safety of other people effectively?	18%

• In most cases (76 per cent), practitioners made efforts to support people on probation to complete their sentence.
• Concerningly, delivery to support desistance was insufficient in a high proportion of cases (68 per cent). There were numerous examples of delays in starting accredited programmes, and failures to carry out drug tests. In 43 per cent of relevant cases (65 out of 133) where inspectors deemed the use of CRS necessary, there was no evidence of referral or delivery. It was particularly concerning that in 54 out of 109 relevant cases no intervention was delivered at all. This meant that key areas of need such as substance misuse and accommodation were not robustly addressed.
• Delivery to support the management of risk was sufficient in just 18 per cent of cases. Coordination and liaison with other risk management agencies were too often ineffective, including in 13 out of 28 MAPPA cases. As with desistance, interventions to address concerns about risk linked to factors such as substance misuse, domestic abuse and child safeguarding were absent in too many cases. A check-in style approach was commonplace with people on probation, which was not supporting good-quality, risk-focused delivery.
• In the small number of cases we inspected where Probation Reset had been applied, people on probation were sufficiently informed of the requirements of the suspension period in just three out of eight relevant examples. While we did see some effective interventions during short periods of supervision, practitioners had not consistently identified appropriate support to address desistance and diversity factors during the suspension period. Multi-agency coordination on domestic abuse and child safeguarding was generally insufficient in these cases, which is a concern given that several were assessed as high risk of serious harm.

Reviewing

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

Key question	Percentage ‘Yes’
Does reviewing focus sufficiently on supporting the compliance and engagement of the person on probation?	48%
Does reviewing focus sufficiently on supporting the person on probation’s desistance?	36%
Does reviewing focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe?	18%

• In the work inspected under this standard, we found that practitioners were not sufficiently responsive in terms of engagement, desistance, and keeping people safe.
• In too many cases, their response to engagement issues such as non-compliance was insufficient. Practitioners did not consistently take a collaborative approach to reviewing, which meant that people on probation and the professionals working with them were not consulted frequently enough when considering progress made. Individuals were meaningfully engaged in less than half of the reviews, and only around 21 per cent of relevant reviews were adequately informed by input from other agencies. Often, practitioners had pulled through written reviews to meet a target without considering the work completed, progress made, or implications of an outstanding intervention.
• Only around a third of reviews focused sufficiently on supporting desistance, with just 31 out of 118 relevant reviews appropriately identifying and addressing changes in factors linked to offending.
• Responsivity to emerging information on risk is vital public protection work; however, reviewing of safety was the primary area of concern under this standard. Just 18 per cent of reviews focused sufficiently on keeping people safe. There was evidence of a lack of professional curiosity at points of significant change, including disclosure of new relationships, contact with children and further offending. In 73 per cent of cases, practitioners failed to adequately inform reviewing activity through input from other agencies involved in managing risk of harm.

Annexe Two: Data workbook (Back to top)

Press notice (Back to top)

“Major shortfalls” found in national arrangements of the Probation Service

Presentation Slides (Back to top)

Launch event video (Back to top)

References (Back to top)