Building an effective and resilient Probation Service

To understand and effectively manage risks associated with the OFPS programme: HMPPS should carry out a detailed assessment of the potential impacts of setting an ?Open? risk appetite for its OFPS programme and articulate this clearly, including seeking agreement from senior departmental staff;

Ref Page 15, Paragraph 20, point a, first bullet

where actual staff-reported activity timings exceed HMPPS?s expectations for tasks, set out how it plans to support staff to reduce the time spent on those tasks, for example by process improvements, changing policy requirements or more learning and development; it should then track whether reductions are realised;

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set out contingency plans for if it does not achieve the reductions required, including any risks associated with its plans; and

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assess whether its workforce plans will deliver the additional staffing levels assumed in its calculation of the capacity gap.

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Where MoJ and HMPPS are making significant changes to the level and depth of supervision and support for different groups they should: build in robust monitoring and evaluation to assess the impact of changes in supervision and support, including whether lower- and medium-risk groups can access services that meet their needs;

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assess whether CRS providers and wider organisations have the capacity and/or funding to absorb increases in demand; and

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work with other government departments to monitor and react to any adverse impacts in other areas of government.

Ref Page 16, Paragraph 20, point d, third bullet

MoJ and HMPPS should agree clear risk thresholds to help manage trade-offs as the programme progresses and establish how it will measure whether it is breaching thresholds; and

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HMPPS should put contingency plans in place to mitigate any risks that materialise.

Ref Page 15, Paragraph 20, point a, third bullet

To minimise the change load of OFPS on staff, HMPPS should: ensure it has a full understanding of how changes from OFPS and wider policy changes affect the service;

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schedule and manage the rollout of changes to minimise the change load on staff, considering the need to balance any shorter-term reactive changes and longer-term strategic solutions;

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set out a rollout schedule and training plan to communicate to staff when changes are due, and when they may need to complete any learning and development; and

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implement regular feedback and review on change implementation, to give early warning of any need to adapt plans.

Ref Page 16, Paragraph 20, point b, fourth bullet

To ensure that HMPPS frees up sufficient capacity and to improve quality, it should: review the estimated capacity gap, in light of wider justice system developments, and ensure its calculations factor in any headroom needed to facilitate improvements in quality;

Ref Page 16, Paragraph 20, point c, first bullet

put in place mechanisms to validate whether changes are achieving the estimated reductions in workload at a national level;

Ref Page 16, Paragraph 20, point c, second bullet