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Select committee: Public Accounts Committee

Conclusion 1

65th Report - Efficiency and resilience of the Probation Service Published 4 Feb 2026 Addressed to HM Treasury

Public Accounts Committee Efficiency and resilience of the Probation Service All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗

Conclusion (the committee's words)
On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) on the efficiency and resilience of the Probation Service.1

From: Public Accounts Committee, 65th Report - Efficiency and resilience of the Probation Service (HC 1235), 4 February 2026

Government response

The government responded to the whole report on 7 April 2026 (deadline 4 April 2026).

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The government states that it "agrees with the Committee's recommendation" on each of the Committee's recommendations, and sets out timelines, a revised performance framework and reporting commitments.

  • On performance, the government "expects the Probation Service to demonstrate measurable and sustained improvements" over the spending review period to March 2029, with a revised performance framework centred on "a smaller number of priority metrics" to be introduced in April 2026.
  • On reoffending, it says it is "very challenging to attribute changes in the reoffending measure to individual initiatives", and that evaluation of 'Reset' "will be published by July 2026".
  • On workloads, the Our Future Probation Service programme was launched with the "primary objective to reduce workloads by 25% by April 2027", and HMPPS plans to share more detail with staff during March and April 2026.
  • It commits to write to the Committee on Serco's performance against its key performance indicators within six months of the report (target August 2026), and on third and private sector support and electronic monitoring capacity (target October 2026).

Read the government's response ↗ Report an error