Select committee inquiry
Transforming rehabilitation: progress review inquiry
Closed
What the inquiry looked at
“Scope of the inquiry Probation services are designed to protect the public, reduce reoffending, supervise offenders in the community, oversee their rehabilitation and ensure that offenders understand the impact of their crimes on victims. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ), through HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS), is responsible for probation services in England and Wales. As at September 2018, 257,000 offenders were supervised by probation services. The Committee’s report in March 2018 found that the MoJ was a long way from delivering the ‘rehabilitation revolution’ it had promised. The Committee had first reported on the major reform to probation services in 2014 outlining several risks and challenges. The Committee’s next report in 2016, concluded that the failure to deal with ICT problems and the impact on providers of lower than expected business volumes had undermined the pace of change, and posed a threat to achieving planned outcomes. The Committee added that it was crucial that the MoJ completed the “rehabilitation revolution” it had started and made good on its promise to reduce the huge economic and human cost of reoffending. Earlier this month, the National Audit Office (NAO) published a report which found that the Ministry has acted on many of the shortcomings in the reforms, including abandoning payment by results. The report, however, also identified risks with its proposals. For example, while the Ministry plans to better align probation regions, it has proposed retaining the split between the National Probation Service (NPS) and Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs), meaning it still faces the challenge of ensuring these services work well together and with the wider system. The MoJ will also need to manage the risks of transitioning to the new contracts and existing providers withdrawing services or failing outright. The hearing will be an opportunity for Members to question officials from the MoJ about its failure to achieve the objectives of its reforms. Members will also use the session to ensure the Ministry acknowledges the root causes of the reforms’ failure and has learnt from these. Moreover, the Committee will seek to secure commitments that the Ministry will reflect its learning in what will follow these failed reforms and is managing risks effectively.”
The committee's words, from the inquiry page on parliament.uk ↗.
What it found
In the committee's words, from the summary of 94th Report - Transforming rehabilitation: progress review ↗
In its haste to rush through its reforms at breakneck speed the Ministry of Justice not only failed to deliver its ‘rehabilitation revolution’ but left probation services underfunded, fragile, and lacking the confidence of the courts. Inexcusably, probation services have been left in a worse position than they were in before the Ministry embarked on its reforms. The Ministry accepts that many aspects of its reforms have not worked, and that services have suffered as a result. Its design of the reforms left Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) too dependent on volumes of work which did not materialise and their exposure to payment by results worsened the subsequent financial pressure. CRCs had insufficient income to cover the cost of basic, good quality probation services, leaving them unable to deliver the innovation promised and vulnerable to outright failure. The Ministry’s attempt to stabilise the contracts, and its decision to terminate them in December 2020—14 months early—will cost the taxpayer an additional £467 million. Mismanagement, risk taking and the lack of properly considered planning has badly let down offenders and there has been no noticeable improvement in the support offered to offenders since these reforms were first implemented, and they have failed to reduce reoffending by as much as expected, with the average number of reoffences committed by each reoffender actually increasing. Through the Gate (TTG) services fail to address needs like stable and suitable accommodation and, in some cases, offenders have been provided with tents and left with no fixed address on release from prison. This will ultimately cost the taxpayer more as costs are shunted elsewhere in the system. The Ministry says it has learned lessons, but it now needs to show that it is putting them into practice and urgently making desperately needed improvements to probation services.
What the government said
No government response is linked to this report.
How the inquiry ran
Each dot is a dated item listed on this page, from 13 March 2019 to 2 July 2019.
- Oral evidence 13 Mar 2019
- Report 3 May 2019
- Correspondence 4 letters
What it recommended 0 recommendations · 23 conclusions
1The breakneck speed with which the Ministry introduced the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms created an unacceptable...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The breakneck speed with which the Ministry introduced the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms created an unacceptable level of risk that was not sufficiently challenged by the safeguards intended to protect the taxpayer. Transforming Rehabilitation was an ambitious programme that contained inherent risks, including combining a ‘black box approach’, using payment by results to incentivise innovation, with extending statutory supervision to offenders sentenced to less than 12 months. The Ministry failed to conduct adequate pilots or to learn sufficiently from similar programmes elsewhere and tied the reforms to a timescale that was undeliverable from the outset. It suffered from optimism bias and gambled on the promises of innovation and it is unacceptable that so many unnecessary risks were taken with taxpayers’ money. The Ministry acknowledges that it implemented its reforms at breakneck speed in order to procure contracts before the 2015 general election. In its haste, it failed to get enough commercial input into its plans. Responding to the problems with these contracts will cost the taxpayer an additional £467 million. Despite the risks involved, the checks and balances for major projects designed to protect the taxpayer, including HM Treasury and the Major Projects Review Group, gave the programme the green light and failed to provide effective challenge. Recommendation: The Ministry, Cabinet Office and HM Treasury, should write to us by the end of June 2019 to set out what has been done to strengthen the approval and challenge processes both within the Ministry and at the centre of government in response to failed programmes such as this.
2The Ministry has created an underfunded and fragile probation market and we are not confident...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Ministry has created an underfunded and fragile probation market and we are not confident in its ability to cope with further provider failure. In September 2016 we warned about CRCs’ increasing dependence on payment by results and the risks to the financial sustainability of CRCs. The Ministry failed to realise that a payment by results model was not appropriate for probation or that reoffending was not a good measure of performance for CRCs. Its system relied on volumes of work which did not materialise, meaning that CRCs were unable to cover the cost of basic probation services let alone invest in innovation. At the outset, the Ministry modelled a 2% reduction in volumes of work but, two years into the programme, volumes were between 16% and 48% lower than anticipated. In February 2019, Working Links and the three CRCs it owned went into administration, requiring the Ministry to transfer these services to Kent, Surrey and Sussex CRC. The Ministry was confident that it or another provider would be able to step in if other suppliers fail, but it is constrained by a cap which means that no provider can own 25% of the market, and the NPS is already dealing with intolerable workloads. Interserve, the owner of five CRCs, went into administration on 15 March and it is unclear what impact this will have on the future of these contracts. Recommendation: The Ministry should write to the Committee, by the end of June 2019, providing details of its contingency arrangements in the event of further provider failure, and explaining what it is doing to manage this risk as its contracts 6 Transforming rehabilitation: progress review proceed to termination in December 2020. The Ministry should also provide the Committee with an outline of how it managed the impact of both Working Links and Interserve collapsing into administration.
3The Ministry will not make sustained progress with reducing reoffending until it can provide the...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Ministry will not make sustained progress with reducing reoffending until it can provide the support offenders desperately need on leaving prison, including securing stable accommodation. The reforms failed to reduce reoffending by as much as expected and, from 2011 to March 2017, the average number of reoffences committed by each reoffender actually increased by 22%. The number of offenders recalled to prison increased by 47% from January 2015 to September 2018 and the Ministry acknowledges that it is a long way from getting post-sentence supervision right. The Ministry’s Through the Gate (TTG) model has not provided the services it promised and an estimated 2,961 prisoners did not receive TTG services in 2018. Prisons have been releasing prisoners without settled accommodation, with some prisoners having been provided with tents instead. The Ministry does not know how many prisoners have settled accommodation after they leave prison. The cross government Reducing Reoffending Board has met two or three times in its first year but there is little concrete evidence of what it has achieved so far. Recommendation: The Ministry, working with the Reducing Reoffending Board should report back to this Committee, by the end of June 2019, setting out a cross- government strategy to reduce reoffending, and how it will measure whether this is working.
4The Ministry failed to involve voluntary sector organisations in delivering probation services on the scale...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Ministry failed to involve voluntary sector organisations in delivering probation services on the scale it promised. We warned in both September 2016 and March 2018 that the Ministry was not doing enough to involve the voluntary sector in efforts to improve rehabilitation services. As at October 2018, just 11% of voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) working in the sector provide services to CRCs, and probation trusts spent less than 3% of their budgets on voluntary and third sector provision. VSOs were frozen out of bidding because they were unable to provide the onerous Parent Company Guarantees required to tender for the contracts. The voluntary sector has also become less involved in providing TTG services, resulting in the loss of better-quality specialist services, that had been provided at no cost to the taxpayer. Currently provision of specialist services on mental health, employment and substance abuse is poor and not tailored to offenders’ needs. The Ministry acknowledges that VSO involvement is patchy and it intends to design its new system to have greater input from VSOs. Recommendation: When it announces its new approach, the Ministry should write to the Committee to clearly explain what role it expects VSOs to play in the probation system, and what it will do to ensure this role is being fulfilled successfully. The Ministry should also outline how it intends to improve its provision of specialist services and how it will tailor these services to the specific requirements of those in need of support.
5The Ministry’s decision to split the probation service has let down offenders and those working...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Ministry’s decision to split the probation service has let down offenders and those working in the justice system. The split of probation services between the NPS and CRCs introduced many new points of contact between different parts of the probation system and with the wider justice system, which create friction Transforming rehabilitation: progress review 7 and require effort and resource to manage. The reforms split the role of probation services in court, so the NPS provides all advice to courts in a pre-sentence report, while CRCs do not attend court. These arrangements undermine sentencers’ confidence in CRCs which, in turn, is partly responsible for the declining use of community sentences – even though community sentences generally lead to better outcomes for offenders. The Ministry failed to anticipate that changes in sentencing practice would increase caseloads for the NPS. As at September 2018 the caseload split between CRCs and the NPS was 59:41 against an original assumption of 64:36. Combined with severe staffing shortages, this has resulted in intolerable workloads for the NPS. Delays to the Ministry’s ICT gateway to provide a link between CRCs and HMPPS have cost the taxpayer £23 million in compensation to CRCs and only two CRCs are currently using the gateway. Recommendation: If it persists with this flawed structure, the Ministry should urgently spell out how such a separation of probation service can work effectively and what it will do to address the failings with the current system.
6If the Ministry does not put into practice the lessons from its failed reform programme...
Concluded (the committee's words)
If the Ministry does not put into practice the lessons from its failed reform programme it is in danger of repeating the same mistakes again. In July 2018, the Ministry announced that it will terminate its CRC contracts, 14 months early, in December 2020. It has consulted on the future of probation services and plans to procure second-generation contracts in April 2019. It does not yet have a blueprint for its new system. The Ministry has stated that the NAO’s report has provided it with a clear framework of things it must do differently in its new system, and that there was not a single lesson in the report it would not take on board. Despite this, the Ministry has not allowed any more time for its procurement of new contracts than it did last time, although it is working on contingencies that may give it some more time. The Ministry is unable to say whether it will conduct pilots of the new system, conceding that it ‘might’ for some areas. Recommendation: When it announces its new plans, the Ministry should write to this Committee spelling out exactly how its plans to address the failings set out by this Committee and the NAO, and how it will avoid the same mistakes happening again. 8 Transforming rehabilitation: progress review 1 The Ministry’s design and implementation of the reforms
7The Ministry told us that all the checks, balances and assurances available to a major...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Ministry told us that all the checks, balances and assurances available to a major government project gave the Transforming Rehabilitation Programme the green light. These included the Major Projects Review Group and the Treasury. Despite difficult decisions about whether it was going too quickly and whether it should be piloted or tested, the decision was taken to go ahead with the programme.17 HMPPS told us that its programme board recognised the risk of implementing its reforms to such a tight timetable. However, the Ministry did not seek a ministerial direction in relation to its concerns about the timetable.18 Funding CRCs through payment by results
8CRCs are paid for the types of activity they undertake rather than the volumes of...
Concluded (the committee's words)
CRCs are paid for the types of activity they undertake rather than the volumes of offenders they supervise, meaning their financial health depends on carrying out types of rehabilitation work which attract payment.19 The CRC contracts did not deliver the volumes, and therefore the income, that CRCs were expecting, meaning that they did not have the money to cover their costs and to invest in innovation.20 The Ministry expected to pay CRCs up to £3.7 billion over the life of the current contracts to 2021–22. However, by August 2018, it forecast that it would pay CRCs £2.3 billion through to December 2020 when the contracts will now end. In letting the contracts, the Ministry only modelled a potential 2% fall in activity volumes, but by the first quarter of 2017–18, the fall in activity ranged between 16% and 48% less than expected.21 In addition, the Ministry had a poor understanding of CRCs’ cost bases. It originally assumed that 20% of CRCs’ costs were fixed, but in June 2017 the average fixed costs reported by CRCs was 77%. This meant that CRCs were placed under significant financial strain when volumes of work were lower than expected, as they could not reduce their costs by as much as they needed to.22
9The financial pressures on CRCs created by the lower volumes of work were exacerbated by...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The financial pressures on CRCs created by the lower volumes of work were exacerbated by the payment by results mechanism.23 We have previously warned about CRCs’ increasing dependence on payment by results and the risks to the financial sustainability of CRCs.24 The Ministry’s payment by results mechanism was based on proven reductions in reoffending after two years. The first set of annual reoffending statistics, published in January 2018, meant that CRCs incurred total liabilities of £9.3 million. The Ministry’s modelling suggested that CRCs’ were likely to incur total liabilities of £146 million if the contracts continued through to 2021–22.25 The Ministry said that the ‘black box’ design where the Ministry paid for the outcomes it wished to achieve and assumed CRCs would be incentivised to do “whatever it takes” to achieve them, did not work and put core services at risk. It accepted that payment by results assumes that the system is willing to accept zero intervention, which would not be acceptable for probation services.26 As a result of its payment by results mechanism, the Ministry did not specify how CRCs should provide 17 Q 55 18 Qq 24, 26 19 Committee of Public Accounts, Government contracts for Community Rehabilitation Companies, Session 2017–19, HC 897, 21 March 2018, p5 20 Q 9 21 C&AG’s Report, paras 2.12, 2.15 22 Q 19; C&AG’s report paras 2.10, 2.16 23 C&AG’s Report, para 2.17 24 Committee of Public Accounts, Government contracts for Community Rehabilitation Companies, Session 2017–19, HC 897, 21 March 2018, p5 25 C&AG’s Report, paras 2.11, 2.17 26 Qq 33, 70 Transforming rehabilitation: progress review 11 some services.27 By February 2019, HM Inspectorate of Probation had rated eight CRCs as ‘requires improvement’ and one as ‘inadequate’ under its new inspection framework introduced in April 2018.28 HMPPS acknowledged that CRCs are being inspected against standards that they were not required to meet under their contracts.29
10The Ministry explained that it now believes that reoffending is not a true measure of...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Ministry explained that it now believes that reoffending is not a true measure of the performance of CRCs because it is affected by so many different factors. For example, the number of reoffences per offender has gone up by 22% from 2011 to March 2017, and this is partly because those coming through the courts tend to be those who are more likely to reoffend, which is not within the control of the CRCs.30 The Ministry told us that it now considers other measures to be better for measuring CRC performance, such as the number of offenders obtaining access to housing and universal credit, and successful employment or mental health programme outcomes.31
11In June 2018 the Ministry commissioned work which found that CRCs faced collective losses of...
Concluded (the committee's words)
In June 2018 the Ministry commissioned work which found that CRCs faced collective losses of £294 million over the life of the contracts compared to expected profits of £269 million when the CRCs had bid. Following this, it took the decision to terminate CRC contracts 14 months early, in December 2020. On 14 February 2019, Working Links and the three CRCs it owned went into administration. The Ministry implemented its contingency plans, by transferring staff and services from the three CRCs to Kent, Surrey and Sussex CRC, owned by Seetec.32 The Ministry told us that it was confident in its contingency plans in the event of any future failure of larger suppliers, such as Interserve, which owns five CRCs. HMPPS said that it had a range of options, including stepping in itself or using other suppliers.33 The latter option is subject to a cap, which prevents any one parent company controlling more than 25% of the market.34 After our evidence session, on 15 March 2019, Interserve went into administration.35 The Ministry has not yet announced what impact, if any, this will have on the CRC contracts owned by Interserve. Lessons for the future
12The Ministry told us that it has learned a lot from its Transforming Rehabilitation programme.36...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Ministry told us that it has learned a lot from its Transforming Rehabilitation programme.36 The Ministry and HMPPS told us that the National Audit Office’s report provided a clear framework of what it must do differently in the future and that there was “not a single lesson in the report that we will not take on board.” The Ministry has consulted on the future of probation services and plans to procure second-generation contracts in April 2019, but it has not yet set out its plans.37 It stressed that it does not yet have a blueprint. The Ministry said that it wants its new contracts to be simpler to avoid the sheer complexity of its current contracts. It also said that it was determined to fix the fact that CRCs and the NPS do not have coterminous regions if it has another generation of contracts of the same kind of model.38 The Ministry told us that it wants the probation 27 Qq 30–31; C&AG’s Report, para 2.20 28 C&AG’s Report, para 10 29 Q 43 30 Q 13; C&AG’s Report, para 1.4 31 Q 14 32 C&AG’s Report, paras 15, 18 33 Qq 91, 94 34 C&AG’s Report, para 3.13 35 Urgent Question, HC Deb, 18 March 2019, c834 36 Q 6 37 Qq 101–103; C&AG’s Report, para 4 38 Qq 114, 119 12 Transforming rehabilitation: progress review market to remain mixed between the private and voluntary sectors and the government. It told us that the market of probation suppliers remains ‘engaged’ and that 40 organisations had attended its market engagement events, in addition to VSOs.39
13The Ministry told us that one of the lessons from Transforming Rehabilitation was the danger...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Ministry told us that one of the lessons from Transforming Rehabilitation was the danger of ‘heroic’ timetables.40 However, the Ministry has set itself a challenging 15 month timetable for the procurement process for its new contracts for probation services.41 The Ministry told us that it was aware of the hard deadline for the termination of its contracts in 2020, and that it was working on contingencies that would give it more time. It said that while it did not have time to pause in implementing its new system, it would “metaphorically pause” to think about how it proceeded. It conceded that it ‘might’ pilot some aspects of its new system.42 39 Qq 106, 111 40 Q 2 41 C&AG’s Report, para 3.15 42 Qq, 99, 102, 105 Transforming rehabilitation: progress review 13 2 The impact on offenders and staff working in probation Support on leaving prison
14The Ministry’s reforms introduced ‘Through the Gate’ (TTG) services from 1 May 2015 to support...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Ministry’s reforms introduced ‘Through the Gate’ (TTG) services from 1 May 2015 to support offenders in their transition from prison to the community by providing resettlement support for accommodation, employment, finance and mental health and substance misuse. In 2016 and 2017, HM Inspectorate of Probation reported that TTG services consistently failed to meet offenders’ resettlement needs. In 2018 the Ministry estimated that 2,961 offenders released from non-resettlement prisons, predominantly sex offenders and foreign national offenders, did not receive TTG services from CRCs at all, despite being eligible for them. HMPPS explained that while it had put in place other arrangements to support the release of these prisoners from non-resettlement prisons, they had not had the additional practical support they could have had from CRCs in resettlement prisons.43 HMPPS told us that one of the major things it had learned from its rehabilitation reforms was the need to have clarity about minimum levels of professional standards for staff. It has now specified that suppliers will provide 484 staff to deliver TTG services.44
15The Ministry told us that problems with housing, employment and access to benefits are the...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Ministry told us that problems with housing, employment and access to benefits are the three real drivers of re-offending. HMPPS said that releasing offenders without accommodation is a huge issue. We asked HMPPS about reports that people leaving prison in Wales, Humberside, Lincolnshire and North Yorkshire were being provided with tents in place of accommodation.45 HMPPS acknowledged that it does not know how many prisoners are living in settled accommodation after they have left prison and it accepted some prisoners had been provided with tents.46 HMPPS told us about some actions it has taken, including expanding the number of approved premises places, but stressed it was not a housing provider. The Ministry told us that it was trying to increase collaboration between the CRCs, the NPS and the statutory and non-statutory housing providers.47 The cross government Reducing Reoffending Board has met two to three times in its first year and was designed to bring Departments together at working level. The Ministry told us that it was working with the Department of Health & Social Care on an offender personality disorder pathway programme, piloting a community sentence treatment requirement with NHS England and Public Health England, working on a programme to allow offenders to sign up with universal credit from prison and on the rough sleeping strategy with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The Ministry acknowledged that it has made ‘early steps’ with these projects but that it had not yet gone far enough.48
16From January 2015 to September 2018 the number of offenders recalled to prison for breaching...
Concluded (the committee's words)
From January 2015 to September 2018 the number of offenders recalled to prison for breaching their licence conditions increased from 4,240 to 6,240 (47%).49 The Ministry told us that this reflected the fact that 40,000 people were now subject to supervision for 43 C&AG Report, paras 1.16, 1.18–1.19, Q 29 44 Q 37 45 Qq 48, 53 46 Qq 48,142 47 Qq 46, 51 48 Qq 125–127 49 C&AG Report, para 1.15 14 Transforming rehabilitation: progress review the first time, because of the extension of statutory supervision to offenders sentenced to less than 12 months. The Ministry acknowledged that it had not got post sentence supervision right.50 Involvement of the voluntary and third sector
17One of the objectives of the Ministry’s reforms was to open the market to a...
Concluded (the committee's words)
One of the objectives of the Ministry’s reforms was to open the market to a range of suppliers from the private and voluntary sectors.51 When we reported on its probation reforms in September 2016 and March 2018 we were concerned that the full potential of the third sector was not being realised.52 However, as at October 2018, just 11% (159) of the 1,443 VSOs working in the criminal justice sector were providing services directly to CRCs.53 HMPPS told us that probation trusts had spent less than 3% of their budgets on voluntary and third-sector provision. The Ministry acknowledged that voluntary sector involvement was “patchy” and that, by and large, while large charities are involved, smaller charities are not. HMPPS told us that it had tried to “encourage and manipulate” supply chains to use smaller suppliers. However, many of the private-sector suppliers had partnered with larger VSOs and CRCs generally wanted to deliver the services themselves because it was easier to do so efficiently. HMPPS acknowledged that CRCs’ lower than anticipated volumes and different case mix had meant suppliers had ‘squeezed’ their supply chains to some extent and not provided the opportunities for smaller VSOs to get involved as the Ministry had planned.54
18HMPPS also told us that smaller suppliers were deterred from getting involved because of the...
Concluded (the committee's words)
HMPPS also told us that smaller suppliers were deterred from getting involved because of the level of risk.55 The Ministry secured parent company guarantees to provide financial protection for the taxpayer, including covering the costs of the Ministry stepping in to provide services for the remaining contract period. The National Audit Office found that many VSOs were unable to provide the financial guarantees required to tender for a contract on their own.56 The Ministry acknowledged that parent company guarantees were one of the obstacles to VSOs being prime suppliers, but it noted that the guarantees served the purpose of protecting the taxpayer from the insolvency of a subsidiary. The Ministry told us that it will design its new system to incorporate greater voluntary sector involvement. HMPPS said it has learned from the rehabilitation reforms that the more risk it transfers in its contracts in terms of volumes and costs, the harder it is for VSOs to play a part.57
19HMPPS explained that one of the consequences of it making resettlement support statutory was that...
Concluded (the committee's words)
HMPPS explained that one of the consequences of it making resettlement support statutory was that many VSOs who had previously provided this support withdrew to focus their efforts elsewhere. HMPPS acknowledged that this had led to “a deterioration in support” since the statutory provision which came in offered little and replaced better quality provision, which it noted had come at no cost to the public sector.58 50 Qq 35–36 51 C&AG’s Report, para 2 52 Committee of Public Accounts, Transforming rehabilitation, Seventeenth Report of Session 2016–17, HC 484, 23 September 2016, page 5; Committee of Public Accounts, Government contracts for Community Rehabilitation Companies, Session 2017–19, HC 897, 21 March 2018, p5 53 C&AG’s Report, para 1.9 54 Qq 11–12 55 Q 12 56 C&AG’s Report, paras 1.8, 3.13 57 Qq 27, 79–80, 148 58 Q 29 Transforming rehabilitation: progress review 15 Splitting services between CRCs and the NPS
20The Ministry’s decision to split the probation service created new operational points of contact between...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Ministry’s decision to split the probation service created new operational points of contact between the NPS, CRCs, prisons and HMPPS, which HMPPS then had to manage.59 The Ministry told us that the Transforming Rehabilitation programme was characterised by an extremely difficult and complicated landscape. The Ministry acknowledged that a consequence of its decision to outsource probation services, while continuing to retain more serious cases in the public sector, engineered a split and created “a two-tier probation service”. HMPPS said that it knew at the outset that fragmenting the system would cause some friction and that this was “not ideal”.60
21The Ministry committed to create an ICT gateway by June 2015 to provide a link...
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Ministry committed to create an ICT gateway by June 2015 to provide a link between CRC and HMPPS systems. which it did not introduce until September 2016. As a result of the delay the Ministry paid £23.1 million in compensation to 17 CRCs.61 By January 2019, only two CRCs were using the gateway, seven were still working towards introducing their own systems and 12 had decided not to use it at all. The Ministry and HMPPS acknowledged that this had not gone as well as it should have done.62
22CRCs’ staff are prevented by law from providing advice in court and so the NPS...
Concluded (the committee's words)
CRCs’ staff are prevented by law from providing advice in court and so the NPS provides all advice to courts in a pre-sentence report. HM Inspectorate of Probation reported that these arrangements do not support sentencers’ confidence in CRCs, which are detached from the process.63 There has been a decline in the use of community sentences, which has in part been influenced by sentencers’ lack of confidence in CRCs. HMPPS acknowledged that community sentences generally achieve better outcomes for offenders. It told us that it has been working to build sentencers’ confidence in CRCs, including through regular meetings with the Senior Presiding Judge and providing more information on what CRCs do.64
23As of September 2018 the caseload split between CRCs and the NPS was 59:41 against...
Concluded (the committee's words)
As of September 2018 the caseload split between CRCs and the NPS was 59:41 against an original assumption of 64:36. The NPS’ high caseloads have been constrained by severe staff shortfalls resulting in intolerable workloads. In August 2018, its overall staff vacancy rate was 11%, and as high as 20% in London. It relied on more than 1,100 temporary staff, at the same time as also facing a shortfall of around 930 full-time equivalent staff.65 HMPPS told us that it was recruiting new probation officers, and its last cohort was around 600. It said that its attrition rate for probation officers in the NPS was 6%, which it did not consider an unreasonable level. But it said that it takes up to two years to fully train probation officers. It explained that it would prefer not to use agency staff and acknowledged that the NPS is “strained.”66 59 C&AG’s Report, paras 13, 2.4 60 Qq 6, 56–57 61 Qq 71–72; C&AG’s Report, para 1.11 62 Qq 72, 74 63 C&AG’s Report, para 2.5 64 Qq 58, 62 65 C&AG’s Report, paras 9, 2.8 66 Qq 40–41 16 Transforming rehabilitation: progress review
Evidence
Oral evidence sessions 1
- 13 Mar 2019No witnesses recordedparliament.uk ↗
Correspondence 4 letters
- 2 Jul 2019Letter from David Gauke MP to Chair in response to the recommendations in the Committee's report on Transforming rehabilitation: progress review - dated 13 June 2019To committee
- 5 Jun 2019Letter from Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, regarding Strengthening probation, building confidence consultation response, dated 16 May 2019To committee
- 14 May 2019Letter from Ian Mulholland, Managing Director for Interserve, to Chair regarding Committee report 'Transforming Rehabilitation' - dated 3 May 2019To committee
- 18 Apr 2019Letter from Sir Richard Heaton KCB to Chair regarding transforming rehabilitation - dated 29 March 2019To committee