Napo members have voted overwhelmingly in favour of potential industrial action over workloads, with 90.76% backing action and warning government that probation staff are at breaking point, putting public safety at risk.
Thousands took part in the indicative ballot amid chronic staff shortages, excessive workloads, burnout and reliance on overtime to keep the service running.
The result should come as a blow to government as it prepares to expand early release from prison and implement Sentencing Act changes, increasing the number of people managed in the community while probation is already struggling to cope.
Napo National Chair Ben Cockburn said: “This ballot wasn’t about members being too busy. It was professionals warning they cannot protect the public properly when there are not enough people to do the work.
“Probation staff make decisions every day with life-changing consequences for the people we work with, victims and the public. If excessive workloads prevent those decisions being made properly, the consequences can be devastating.
“The government cannot keep treating probation as the place where the consequences of failures elsewhere in the criminal justice system are dumped. If you overload probation, you increase risk. It really is that simple.”
Napo says the government’s £700 million probation investment must deliver more frontline staff, better pay, safer workplaces and manageable workloads, rather than being absorbed by technology and electronic monitoring costs.
The union says recruitment alone will not solve the crisis unless staff are retained by improving the conditions they work under.
Napo recently spent more than a year in a bitter pay dispute with HMPPS and the government, arguing that improving pay is essential to recruitment and retention and therefore directly connected to tackling excessive workloads.
Napo National Chair Ben Cockburn said: “Promises of extra investment are starting to sound like snake oil when we have heard them so many times before.
“We have been told about hundreds, then thousands, of new recruits. But how many qualified, stayed, or later left because workloads, pay and conditions became unbearable?
“You cannot recruit your way out of a retention crisis while leaving the underlying problems untouched.
“Our members have now delivered an overwhelming verdict. They are saying enough is enough.”
Napo is urging government to listen to probation professionals before the consequences of a service pushed beyond its limits become impossible to ignore.
HMPPS has previously been issued with seven key demands, with deadlines for implementation, as Napo prepares for the next stage of its workloads campaign."