PR01-2025
12 February 2025
Embargo: 11:00 12 February 2025
Lord Chancellor’s speech on the future of the probation service.
The probation service was decimated as a result of Chris Grayling’s disastrous privatisation reforms. Since its reunification in 2021, the service has been severely impacted by staff shortages in each of its regions and dangerously excessive workloads. The service requires significant investment both in the organisation of the service and in its staff in order to meet the Governments agenda for its future.
General Secretary Ian Lawrence in response to the speech by the Lord Chancellor in London today, said: “Our members have gone above and beyond over the last decade to keep the probation service running and to deal with successive governments’ emergency measures to alleviate the prison capacity crisis. They need more than just words to recognise their efforts, and the previously announced 2.8% cap on public sector pay rises just isn’t going to cut it. Our members want to be properly recompensed for the work that they do to protect the public and to help people turn their lives around.”
On top of better wages to recruit and retain staff Napo is calling on the Lord Chancellor to make radical reforms to ensure the future of the service. It’s current capacity to absorb change is being stymied by a prison centric civil service. Napo have tried to work constructively with this agency, making suggestions for real changes to Probation workload that will support staff in doing their jobs to the best of their ability. Unfortunately, all too often HMPPS have been too slow to respond, or have failed to explore these options properly. We believe the gross mis-management of HMPPS (and its predecessor) over the past decade has led to the current state of crisis in the Probation Service. As a result Napo do not have confidence in them to make any substantial positive changes to the working conditions or practice of our members. Napo wants probation to be taken out of HMPPS and to be embedded into the local communities it serves and not suffocated by centrally driven bureaucracy.
Ian Lawrence said: “Prior to Grayling’s reckless reforms, probation was an award-winning service. All 36 Probation Trusts were rated as good or excellent. Since 2014 all that good work has been lost. Probation just doesn’t fit the civil service model and we risk losing the profession altogether if we don’t break away from prisons and central control.”
Probation needs to be able to focus on its core work and evidence led practice. It cannot continue to be simply used as an escape valve to alleviate prison pressures. This is why Napo is calling for removal from the civil service to enable it to deliver on its key priorities. Just as the government can’t build its way out of a prison crisis it cannot recruit itself out of the probation crisis. Drastic urgent action needs to be taken to reduce workloads in a way that ensures public protection, protection of its own staff and groundbreaking changes by way of the sentencing review to make a permanent impact on reducing re-offending.
ENDS
Contact
Tania Bassett Press Parliament and Campaigns
tbassett@napo.org.uk
07904 184195