ilawrence@napo.org.uk's blog

I signed off a members’ mail out from the Officers and myself this afternoon to update you in detail about where we are with JR. Meanwhile, I wanted to take this opportunity to personally express my appreciation to everyone (and I mean everyone) who has contributed to this remarkable piece of Napo teamwork.

Well, we waited, and we waited for the grand announcement about who all these exciting and innovative providers would be, and the Cooks and Cleaners have pitched up.

The news that we gave out late on Friday that we had decided to allow Mr Grayling a very short extension to our ‘cease and desist’ request as part of our legal challenge seems to have ruffled his feathers.

All who have witnessed Chris Graylings chaotic meddling with the Criminal Justice System will surely be beyond exasperation at his regular use of flawed or incomplete statistics and outright lies, as he seeks to portray himself as the great reformer.

I want to say a massive thank you to all those members who made the journey up to Scarborough last week. Despite the pressures of the work state and operational chaos you find yourselves in, and despite the best efforts of the employer to make life difficult, you once again defied the odds.

It was a real pleasure to be invited to speak at the Association of Black Probation Officers Conference in Newbold Revel yesterday. I returned to London seriously fired up after hearing a quite fabulous contribution from Viv Ahmun from Choices Consortium (one amongst many I ought to add, but sadly, many competing pressures only afforded me the opportunity for a brief visit on this occasion).

Trips to 102 Petty France Street, the imposing and hermetically sealed headquarters of the MoJ are a bit like a journey into the modern day equivalent of ‘Castle Greyskull’ (as in Masters of the Universe). That said, and notwithstanding the pressures on everyone which can occasionally make engagement difficult, it’s fair to say that the majority of the people that we meet there tend to be as polite and professional as possible.

Observations from members attending Napo Branch meetings are a precious commodity that anyone in a leadership position in our union should heed carefully. The above question/observation was just one of many valuable contributions that came from the floor of the West Yorkshire AGM that I was privileged to have been invited to address today in Leeds, but it somehow typified the feelings of many members about the damage that TR has done to the probation community.