The offer has been described by HMPPS senior leaders as being ‘fair’ or ‘good’. Don’t be misled, because it is anything but.
As we’ve set out in the pay claim Probation pay has fallen way behind that of other sectors in the past 15 years. How is it fair that this pay offer won’t even do enough to match Probation workers pay with others in HMPPS, the Ministry of Justice or the wider Civil Service? What financial incentive is there for people to stay in Probation when they could get thousands of pounds more for doing a similar job elsewhere?
We’ve seen some attempt to claim that this offer is a good one for Probation as it is like that received by Prison staff. Even if that’s accepted, and it’s questionable if that’s accurate, what’s the point of parity for this one year of a pay cycle when we’re so far behind already. All that does is maintain the inequality between our pay and Prison Service staff.
This pay offer represents a pay cut in reality – according to the indicator used by the Trades Union Congress, inflation has run above 4% for every month but one since April 2025. The money you’d receive this year under this pay offer won’t match what you spend.
Members at the lowest pay point of Band 2 will already have noticed that this pay offer retains the poverty pay approach of this employer. On the 1st of April 2026 this pay point will, again, fall below the National Minimum Wage due to the inadequate rise proposed by HMPPS.
If members accept this pay offer of a lower percentage at this stage, then you harm all future earnings that you could have received if an improved offer is made following any rejection of the offer.
How can it be that HMPPS and the Government can find hundreds of millions of pounds to push into the pockets of failed electronic monitoring providers or sink billions of pounds to open huge new prisons rather than investing in staff who repeatedly go way above and beyond in delivering for the people we work with and out communities on sentences that work? We also know that there’s been an underspend of approximately £100 million in the Probation Service budget in this financial year, in part caused by the fact that across the Regions HMPPS can’t recruit enough staff across various key roles. Why hasn’t more effort and money been put into retaining staff, starting by providing them with a decent pay offer this year?
By one of our most recent calculations giving Probation staff a decent pay offer this year could cost less than 0.01% of the total amount the Government budgets to spend this year. HMPPS tell us we’re doing “extraordinary jobs”, so why are we worth so little to them?