Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 19
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)
Crest Advisory and the Rehabilitating Probation Project Team also highlighted concerns that the programme will cause further disruption to the service, exacerbating pressures on already over-stretched staff.39 HMPPS told us that it was conscious that the service had been through successive structural changes and that it therefore needs to be more careful than usual as it rolls out changes. It explained that changes including new digital tools would be introduced incrementally over the next 18-months and that it is not taking a “big-bang” approach.40 We asked HMPPS whether the OFPS programme was on track. It explained that there had been some movement from its original timetable as it has had to manage several uncertainties, including financial allocation decisions, which it had hoped would have been resolved at this point.41 We asked if some of this slippage was due to difficulties delivering digital change. HMPPS acknowledged that previous digital change programmes had not always gone as planned within MoJ, but explained that this had not been an issue for its current programme. It stressed that it is focused on ensuring that the digital aspects of the programme are not seen as digital projects but as business change initiatives that result in tools that staff see value in and can use.42
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).