Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 18
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)
Written evidence from the Prison Reform Trust raised concerns over potential risks to public safety from some of the proposed changes . In particular, they were concerned that reducing rehabilitative activity for lower-risk individuals, while necessary and pragmatic in the short term, could undermine long-term public safety and perpetuate cycles of reoffending.37 Given the pace and nature of the planned changes, we asked MoJ whether the programme poses a risk to public protection. MoJ told us that public safety is its “absolute top concern”. It stressed that it wants to ensure people have the right level of supervision and that the planned changes will enable practitioners to focus on high-risk individuals. HMPPS also told us that it has a new public protection strategy and taskforce, and 33 Qq 11, 34 34 Qq 37, 42, 50, 60, 62, 63; C&AG’s Report, para 3.9 35 Qq 39, 56, 60–61, 64, 67; C&AG’s report, para 15 and Figure 14 36 Qq 48–50; C&AG’s Report, para 3.14 37 RPS0004; RPS0006 14 that it plans to refine its performance metrics to focus on a core number of protection measures that matter most. HMPPS did, however, note that risk can never be eliminated from the service.38
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).