Probation reunification one year on

Two and a half thousand trainee probation officers have been recruited in the past two years, and the service is currently recruiting at scale for unpaid work supervisors. The Inspectorate however has said that development training needs to be looked at.

Yesterday, one year on from probation reunification, the Institute for Government think tank brought together a panel comprising MoJ Executive Director for the Probaton Reform Programme, Jim Barton, Executive Director at the Interventions Alliance, Suki Binning, and the Head of Probation Inspection Programme at HM Inspectorate of Probation, Linda Neimantas. 

Overall the panel agreed that the transition has successfully been delivered, but that the service still faces some significant challenges. 

Jim Barton said: “The simple fact of structural unification didn’t and couldn’t fix [every challenge]. 

“It could not manage out of thin air the additional thousands of staff that we know we need to recruit. Nor could it address the legacy challenges that we have both in our estate and in the IT tools available to our staff on a day to day basis.” 

Suki Binning said that the initial notification of the move was not done as well as it could have been and as a custodian of the CRC [Private sector supplier of Probation and Prison-based rehabilitative services], she expected to be engaged with the process. 

She asked that the service goes forward in a “collaborative manner.” 

Mr Barton ageed saying: “it feels uncomfortable with hindsight the decision in 2020 to stop delivery partner competition was a decision we made and then communicated to the CRCs.” 

Nonetheless, he said recruitment  into the service was going well, and that two and a half thousand probation officers had been recruited in the last two years. Furthermore the 15 per cent increase in the probation budget (£155m) announced earlier in the year, means they plan to increase staff numbers from 17,500 to more than 20,000 by 2025/26. 

“For once we can't use the “we dont have enough money” excuse to not tackle the issues we have in probation at the moment,” he said. 

Both Ms Binning and Ms Neimantas asked for part of that budget to be invested into professional development.

Regarding national versus local level control of the service, the pendulum is still swinging, said Mr Barton. He said there is a general consensus that there needs to be more local input but exactly where the pendulum falls has not yet been decided. 

Ms Neimantas confirmed: “We’ve seen in our inspections is there is some tension between national, regional, and PDU level and how much flexibiltiy do the heads of the PDU have to deliver. 

“What we are finding at the moment is those relationships [..] are still being worked out.” 

Last year’s move marked the fourth major restructuring of the probation service in 20 years, and was delivered mid-pandemic. More than 220,000 people were on probation at the time with 16,000 probation staff also affected.