Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 27
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)
MoJ and HMPPS’s plans also involve a significant increase in the use of electronic monitoring. MoJ told us that the number of people on electronic monitoring has doubled in recent years, from around 10,000 people in 2020 to 26,600 in September 2025.61 It expects the number of people monitored to increase by up to 22,000 people.62 However, MoJ and HMPPS confirmed that the performance of Serco, its main contractor providing the electronic monitoring service, had not met expectations since May 2024. They explained that there was a backlog in fitting tags, but that the backlog was cleared by November 2024. They told us that Serco’s performance had “dramatically improved” since, and told us that they expect Serco to meet its key performance indicators by February 2026.63 59 RPS0006 60 Qq 102, 103 61 Qq 47, 90 62 GOV.UK, Press release, Tens of thousands more to be tagged under biggest ever expansion 63 Qq 90–95 18
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).