The Probation Service is facing often ‘chronic staffing shortages at every grade’ according to this year’s annual report by the watchdog, which also highlighted challenges around hybrid working.
The outgoing chief inspector of probation, Justin Russell, is calling for an independent review of whether the Probation Service should return to local control, just two years after unification into a national service.
As HM Inspectorate of Probation published its 2022-23 report today, Russell said: “The Probation Service is struggling. It’s more than two years since the unification of probation back into the public sector as a single national service.
“I said at the time that this was unlikely to be the silver bullet many were hoping for. Sadly, this has now proved to be the reality. Yes, there are staffing issues, yes there was a considerable impact from Covid-19, but as this annual report shows we have seen little improvement in our inspections over the past two years. The supervision of people on probation isn’t at the level it should be.”
The chronic staffing shortages identified led to what staff report perceived to be unmanageable workloads and to poor management oversight of frontline practitioners, which was to be an acceptable standard in only 28% of cases.
Private-sector Community Rehabilitation Companies were created in 2014 in what was widely regarded as a bungled privatisation by the then justice secretary Chris Grayling. In June 2021, CRCs and the public-sector National Probation Service were merged into one single public-sector Probation Service, the fourth major structural reorganisation in 20 years.
The restructuring highlighted staffing levels and caseload pressures caused by real-terms funding cuts and a flawed payment-by-results contract mechanism. Russell said that many private probation providers were forced to cut the number of qualified probation officers, pushing average individual caseloads to unsustainable levels in some local areas.
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“Given that staffing numbers for the CRCs were never published, the extent of this staffing shortfall didn’t become known until re-unification, when it became evident that the service was thousands of officers short of what was necessary to deliver manageable workloads,” said Russell.
Ambitious recruitment targets were set to fill the gaps, and an additional £155 million was added to the service’s budget, taking it over £1bn per year. “However, an influx of inexperienced new staff all needing to be trained and mentored has created its own problems,” he added.
Staffing levels vary substantially by region. The vacancy rate across all grades averages 29% but ranges from 19.6% in the West Midlands region to 34.9% in London.
Remote working in probation
The report also highlights difficulties caused by remote working, with staff typically working from home two days a week and going to the office or to appointments three days a week.
Russell said the Probation Service had to change its entire operating model in response to the Covid pandemic. “Then, like the rest of the public sector, [it] had to deal with the long-term impacts of that pandemic on backlogs, staff morale and the partners it works with,” he said “This made coming out of the pandemic, if anything, even more difficult than going into it.”
Many trainee probation officers told inspectors that they had found it difficult to learn the job and get good support from their colleagues for two main reasons. Firstly, those who qualified during the pandemic were often working and doing their training remotely; and, secondly, when they were in the office, there were fewer colleagues available to ask for advice.
Russell told The Times: “That [working arrangement] does restrict the opportunities, particularly for new staff, to interact with more experienced colleagues in the office and to learn from them by working alongside them. And that’s following on from the fact they were having to do all of their training online as well.”
He added: “I personally would like to see staff going into the office more days, and I think they would benefit from doing that. It might be an interesting piece of work for the Probation Service itself to do – to see if there’s a correlation between staff time in the office and the quality of work that gets done. That’s certainly a correlation I’d encourage them to look at.”
The Probation Service said: “We have made major progress in addressing the concerns raised in this report, with the most recent data showing improved performance in key areas such as the proportions of ex-offenders in settled accommodation and attending specialist programmes to change their behaviour.
“This is thanks to our investment of £155 million per year, allowing the Probation Service to recruit more than 1,000 additional frontline staff in the last year to deliver tougher supervision and keep the public safe.
“The unified Probation Service is delivering greater consistency in supervision and we are already giving local leaders greater decision-making powers to better address the unique issues in their area.”
Napo, the trade union representing workers in the Probation Service and Family Courts, has previously called for a public inquiry into the state of the service in England and Wales.
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