The leader of the largest trade union representing Probation
staff in England and Wales (Napo) told the Justice Select
Committee today, that the probation service is in serious
difficulty and that taxpayers are continuing to fund systemic
failure especially across the 21 outsourced Community
Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs).
General Secretary Ian Lawrence in an oral evidence session told
the Committee that halfway through the initial 7-year
contracts with the MoJ, reports by Dame Glenys Stacey, Chief
Inspector for Probation, and the National Audit Office reveal
that private probation providers are barely meeting one third of
their performance targets and that despite hundreds of millions
of pounds in Government funding, the Payment by Results mechanism
(PbR) has resulted in only two out of 21 CRC’s qualifying for the
scheme.
Meanwhile, the National Probation Service (NPS) struggles with
low staff morale and record staff shortages together with
administrative chaos that has seen at least 2000 staff being
incorrectly paid or not having their pension deductions correctly
made throughout most of 2017.
Ian Lawrence said: “Several months on and the position is no
better than when we were last here before the Committee. Since
then we have had the Probation System Review, the precursor to
the huge financial ‘bail out’ for the Community Rehabilitation
Companies that featured at the recent hearing of the Committee
for Public Accounts with no accountability or transparency being
provided in terms of value for money for the taxpayer. It’s a
situation not unlike that which caused the collapse of
Carillion.”
The JSC were also provided with first hand written testimonies
from a number of probation practitioners detailing their
experiences in coping with the myriad problems that have followed
the implementation of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms
(TR) in the spring of 2015.
In his evidence to the JSC Ian Lawrence also referenced the
union’s serious concerns about the operational models that are
being run by some CRC providers, citing an example where 19
trained Probation Officers have left the German owned
Aurelius/Working Links organisation over the last nine
months.
Ian Lawrence also said: “Some of the independent reports into
what is going on in Probation are among the worst I have ever
seen, and bear out the views of our hard pressed and highly
committed members that TR has been an unmitigated disaster. Napo
believes that the Probation service must be fully restored into
public ownership.”
The Justice Committee are currently considering evidence from a
number of contributors and are expected to report later this
year.
