Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 12
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 ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
HM Inspectorate of Probation’s 2023 research indicates that high-quality probation supervision by a probation practitioner can significantly improve sentence completion rates and reduce reoffending.23 We asked MoJ about the extent to which poor probation performance has influenced worsening outcomes, including reoffending and recalls. HMPPS told us that that there was no evidence that probation staff were recalling people inappropriately, and the numbers had risen because of “the crisis in prisons”, as more people had been released from prison and were on probation, and probation had a higher-risk caseload. On reoffending it argued that other factors such as housing, employment, drugs treatment are all important. It told us that MoJ and HMPPS have been working with other partners, including the Department for Work and Pensions and businesses on employment support, and had made progress in all these areas. However, despite 20 Qq 2, 16 21 C&AG’s Report, para 1 22 Qq 20, 22; C&AG’s Report, para 1.7 23 C&AG’s Report, para 1.8 11 repeated probing, MoJ and HMPPS did not acknowledge any link between the poor performance of the Probation Service and deteriorating offender outcomes.24
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).