Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 9
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)
HMPPS first introduced a prioritisation framework to help reduce staff workloads in 2022. But workloads remained high, in particular for probation officers, who were working at around 118% capacity on average, with highs of 126% in some regions including London and East of England.15 Despite this, HMPPS did not introduce further prioritisation measures until its ‘Reset’ scheme in April 2024, and then its ‘Impact’ scheme in April 2025.16 HMPPS stressed that its Reset and Impact schemes, which involved reducing supervision for lower-risk individuals to allow probation officers to focus on higher-risk offenders, were aimed at improving performance.17 HMPPS explained that it took time for trainee probation officers to become fully qualified, but that the flow of new probation officers, coupled with ‘Reset’ and ‘Impact’, was starting to make a difference.18 It also pointed to its Our Future Probation Service programme, which it hopes will reduce workloads to a manageable level by March 2027.19 9 C&AG’s Report, para 5, Figure 5 10 Qq 3, 6 11 RPS002; RPS0003 12 Qq 3, 10 13 Qq 10–15, 37 14 C&AG’s Report, para 2.6 15 C&AG’s Report, paras 2.14–2.15 16 Qq 5, 28, 45, 64 17 Qq 22, 44, 45, 51; C&AG’s Report, para 2.16 18 Qq 35, 37,38 19 Qq 63, 80 10
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).