Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 22
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)
We asked whether freeing up 25% of capacity will be sufficient to improve performance. HMPPS told us that this is its estimate of what is needed to bring the service back into balance by April 2027, and which will allow staff to deliver a high-quality service.46 However, while its estimated capacity shortfall is based on its updated activity timings, it acknowledged that it reduced these timings down from staff-reported averages. HMPPS said this was because it found that staff were doing more than they needed to do and has issued staff with new guidance to help them complete tasks more quickly.47 Given that HMPPS’s internal review indicated that it needed to reduce workload by more than 25% to allow staff time needed for learning, we asked HMPPS why it did not agree with its own review. HMPPS explained that it agreed with the review’s broad conclusion that staff needed to be spending more time on training, but argued that additional time for this was already factored into its modelling.48 We challenged HMPPS on how it can be certain of the number of staff it needs if it does not yet know what the optimal caseloads for staff will be. HMPPS stressed that it is confident that its estimate of the shortfall is correct and that it knows what the optimal caseloads are at this point in time. However, it explained that it will need to reassess optimum caseloads as it introduces new ways of working.49
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).