Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 22
Seventy-Eighth Report - Resettlement support for prison leavers
Published 11 Nov 2023
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Improving resettlement support for prison leavers All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
MoJ told us it is working with HMPPS to better understand what works best on accommodation support for prison leavers.52 Outcomes have remained stable in recent years despite HMPPS’ investments, with 76% of prison leavers from April 2022 to February 2023 in settled accommodation after three months, compared with 75% in 2021–22.53 In its March 2023 inspection of post-release support for prison leavers, HMI Probation found that HMPPS’s flagship initiative to provide 84 days of housing to prisoners at risk of homelessness (Community Accommodation Service Tier 3, or CAS3) was working well but securing longer-term accommodation for prison leavers remained difficult.54 HMPPS told us that finding housing in some parts of England and Wales is challenging, and it needs to do more to understand how to improve the long-term outcomes for prison leavers.55 HMPPS plans to compare outcomes for CAS3 against control groups in late 2023 to isolate the effectiveness of the service in improving accommodation outcomes.56 46 C&AG’s Report, para 3.7 47 Qq 86, 94 48 C&AG’s Report, para 3.10 49 Q86; C&AG’s Report, para 3.9 50 Q86 51 Qq 11, 15, 22, 85 52 Q3 53 C&AG’s Report, para 1.15–1.18 54 C&AG’s Report, para 1.20 55 Qq 8–9 56 C&AG’s Report, para 3.9 Resettlement support for prison leavers 15
From: Public Accounts Committee, Seventy-Eighth Report - Resettlement support for prison leavers (HC 1329), 11 November 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 14 February 2024 (deadline 11 January 2024).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government says it agrees with each of the Committee's recommendations on resettlement support for prison leavers, giving target dates for several of them.
- On inequalities, HMPPS is planning a programme of work to understand disparities in resettlement outcomes, and says that "By April 2025" it will deliver this analysis across prioritised thematic areas.
- On an action plan, HMPPS will "respond to the Committee by the six-month deadline" and says its plan will aim for "an adequate and consistent resettlement service" for all prison leavers by April 2025.
- On substance misuse, MoJ and the Department of Health and Social Care will develop a proposal on metrics, and the government says it will publish these metrics routinely, with a target implementation date of summer 2024.
- On evaluation, impact evaluations are "expected to be complete" by summer 2024, though findings on impact for some initiatives will only be available beyond 2024.