Treading Water

This feels a very strange time for us in probation as deafening silence seems to have descended everywhere. The MoJ are saying nothing. The preferred bidders are saying nothing. Chris Grayling seems to be keeping a very low profile. The CRC's are saying nothing; ditto Napo. 

In order to try and find something to say during this interregnum, and whilst we tread water, I've been looking back at stuff I never got around to publishing. Lets cast our mind back to the day the preferred bidders were announced. Here's one CEO who seems particularly bemused by what happened and decided to share it with staff in the house magazine:-  

Peferred Bidder announcement

The announcement that Sodexo Justice Services in partnership with Nacro are the preferred bidder for BeNCH made last Wednesday an important day for us.

Ordinarily I would have arranged simultaneous meetings throughout BeNCH to have announced such a significant piece of news. However this was not possible owing to the
surreal sequence of events leading up to the announcement which I would like to relay to you.

I received news of the impending announcement about 5.15pm on the 28th - the evening before the announcement was due to be made – through a teleconference with other CRC CEOs. Ironically I nearly missed the conference call as the email inviting me to participate was sent to “Niel” rather than Neil! Even more ironic was that not long before I received the call telling me I was missing the vital teleconference, I received a call from another NOMS official checking that I was available on my mobile but that “I shouldn’t read anything into this as it was just a matter of routine”. I was instructed to keep the announcement confidential, until parliament had been informed.

The Ministry of Justice were understandably very concerned about the need to keep what is, after all, commercially sensitive information secure. As a result they decided the best way of maintaining confidentiality was to courier the envelopes containing the announcement (plus supporting documents) to each CRC’s Head Office.

Fair enough, you may say – using couriers is a well tried and tested way of delivering precious goods. However, the MoJ also felt that the envelopes should not be delivered direct to the CRC CEO’s, but rather they should be delivered to members of the NOMS
Contract Management Teams. Despite knowing that the Ministerial Statements would be made at 11am, MoJ felt it best to arrange for the couriers to arrive early in the morning. I was alerted to the fact that they may arrive as early as 7am.

As required, I duly arrived in Stevenage at 7am to let in the NOMS contract manager, Matthew Kelly, who arrived soon after. The package arrived after 8am and was presented
to Matthew. I was not allowed to receive or open the envelope until 10.45am – some 15 minutes before the Written Ministerial Statement (WMS) was to be published in the Commons Library. At just after 11am I duly received confirmation that the WMS had been made, and received email versions of the paperwork that had just been handed to, that had been closely guarded by the contract manager for the past 3 hours.

As soon as it had been confirmed that the WMS had been made I sent the news to staff that Sodexo Criminal Justice Services in partnership with NACRO are our preferred bidder by email and on our intranet InsideBeNCH.

As you may know Sodexo have their roots in the world of hotels and catering, although they now have a large presence in European prisons, with over 100 prisons across the continent - including 5 prisons in Scotland and England.

Significantly this includes HMP Peterborough which is within the BeNCH area. You may be aware that this prison has also been delivering a Payment by Results project and the
learning from this will be of considerable benefit. We are looking forward to finding out the details of their bid and how their plans for service delivery in the future. Sodexo have
won six contract package areas in total – including three in the East of England.

I would urge you all to visit the Sodexo website (uk.sodexo.com) as this gives an outline of the company’s history, values and mission.

Many operational staff will already be familiar with Nacro (the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders) who are a large national charity with considerable
experience of working in the ETE, substance misuse and resettlement fields.

CEO Neil Moloney

Letter to staff from heads of Sodexo and Nacro

Dear CRC Staff

The Ministry of Justice has announced the preferred bidder as Sodexo Limited, trading as Sodexo Justice Services (SJS), in partnership with Nacro. We are absolutely delighted to have been awarded this contract and we look forward to working with you to reduce reoffending and make our communities safer places to live.

Sodexo globally has a two-fold mission: to improve the quality of lives for all those we serve and: to contribute to the economic, social and environmental development of the cities, regions and countries where we operate. By joining Sodexo you are joining the 18th largest employer worldwide, with over 428,000 employees, operating in 80 countries in over 33,000 sites. Here in the UK&Ireland we have over 34,000 employees, with over 2,300 working within the Sodexo Justice Services segment across our 5 prisons.

SJS have a strong reputation for delivering ethical, innovative and rehabilitative justice services, and our mission is to change lives for the better. We have over 2,300 staff working within SJS across 5 prisons in the UK SJS are in partnership with Nacro, the UK’s largest crime reduction charity. Nacro has been delivering resettlement services to offenders since 1966, both inside prisons and in the community and has a long history of working in partnership with organisations from the public, private and voluntary sectors and delivers contracts with private companies, mental health foundation trusts and a large number of charities, research organisations and universities. Having worked together in the past we are delighted to partner with Nacro and have the opportunity to build on these foundations in developing a pioneering partnership with the CRC and to play a significant role in transforming rehabilitation services and delivering the right outcomes for people and communities.

Our approach is to recognise and to continue to put your skills in building effective relationships with some very challenging service users at its core. It also relies on strong local networks with other organisations and providers who can contribute to the goal of reducing reoffending. We have exciting ideas to share with you about how to make the most of the opportunities presented by new legislation on short term prisoners and the creation of the Rehabilitation Activity Requirement. 

Tony Leech,
Managing Director, Sodexo Justice Services

Jacob Tas, 

Chief Executive Officer, Nacro

Thanks go to the person sending me the following Interserve press release from 2012 which I don't recall seeing before and mentions a few more names:-

YVONNE THOMAS TO LEAD INTERSERVE’S JUSTICE TEAM
by Interserve Press Office | Feb 06, 2012

Appointment further reinforces Interserve’s long-standing relationship with the Ministry of Justice, National Offender Management Service and Her Majesty’s Prison Service.

Interserve, the FTSE 250 support services company, has underlined its serious intent to help the Ministry of Justice transform the delivery of justice. Building on its 25-year history of delivering innovation through financing, building and maintaining many of the UK's prisons, Interserve has invested in a highly experienced operational team to develop and deliver its offerings in frontline justice services, led by Yvonne Thomas.

Yvonne joins Interserve from the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), where she sat on the Board as an Operations Director. Before that, Yvonne was Director of Offender Management.

Yvonne will lead a formidable team which allies operational and strategic prisons expertise from both the public and private sectors. Adding operational expertise to its existing knowledge and experience, Interserve now has a complete end-to-end capability to develop innovative solutions in the delivery of custodial and community services.

Interserve’s justice team has got off to a promising start, having been shortlisted to provide services to all three prisons in which the company expressed interest. The prisons, Durham, Onley and Wolds, are among nine prisons the MoJ has put out for tender.

With MoJ competition plans spanning the entire Justice arena, including payment by results (PbR) pilots and electronic monitoring (tagging), the horizons for Interserve’s justice team are broad indeed.

For Yvonne Thomas it is an exciting time:

“We believe we can make a significant contribution to the justice sector. The public- and private-sector backgrounds of our team, combined with their strong operational track records, mean we see great scope for applying private-sector investment, flexibility and innovation to improve service provision.

“The payment-by-results principle is particularly compelling. Interserve has experience operating this type of model with the Department for Work and Pensions’ Work Programme. We’re determined that if our prison bids prove successful, the positive outcomes achieved for prisoners leaving an Interserve establishment will be able to be accurately measured. Not only will this show how effective we and our delivery partners are, it will also underline the value for money we will provide for the taxpayer - and ultimately how, in partnership, we can help reduce reoffending.”

Interserve’s ambitious yet broad aspirations in the justice sector are matched by its highly experienced operational team covering both custodial and community services. Together, the team possess the skills to devise and deliver the kind of imaginative new approaches to reduce reoffending currently sought by the Ministry of Justice.

Commenting on the new team Adrian Ringrose, Chief Executive of Interserve, said:

“Outsourcing frontline services is a must, given the state of the public finances. Interserve can play a significant role in delivering frontline services for the Ministry of Justice having gained substantial experience in other sectors, among them custodial construction and design. Our experience is both highly relevant and transferable.

“We have attracted a first-class team to Interserve with a range of talents and skills. Led by Yvonne Thomas, our team has the drive, passion and vision to help reduce reoffending and improve prisoner re-integration into the community.”

Key members of the dedicated justice team include:

Rob Kellett, Operations Director, joins from the National Offender Management Service where he has spent over 30 years in the management of large and complex prisons. He was also previously Head of Contracted Prisons.

Steve Taylor, Director of Custody, has over 20 years’ experience in public and private custodial services, most recently at Forest Bank Prison. He has a particular interest in the development of stakeholder relationships to deliver reductions in reoffending.

Simon Taylor, Commercial Director, joins from private-sector firm Sodexo, where he developed the management systems for PFI and prison contracts. He also negotiated the innovative PbR Social Impact Bond at Peterborough Prison.

Interserve has also retained Trevor Williams, the former Director of Operations, Director of High Security and Head of Contracted Prisons for HMPS and subsequently NOMS, while Christine Lawrie, the former Chief Executive of the Probation Association, and Ben Emm, who was Chief Officer of Bedfordshire and Head of the National Probation Improvement Agency for probation, are responsible for community and strategy advice.

Interserve’s experience in delivering safe and secure facilities:

Interserve already has a long-standing relationship with the MoJ, NOMS and Her Majesty’s Prison Service as a custodial construction partner and has built and refurbished over 5,000 cells. It also reduced the cost per cell by 29 per cent through successive innovations, among them the introduction of colour-coding identification of routes and facilities now widely adopted throughout the prison estate. Interserve has experience in innovative prison cell design and has developed operational solutions to improve cost, safety and security.

Interserve also has extensive experience of successfully mobilising and delivering complex and challenging services across a wide range of sectors including:

• The building and operating of the Littlemore Medium Secure Unit for the NHS Trust (sectioned and detained patients).
• Service delivery at University College London Hospital (UCLH) providing security functions, CCTV response, control room operation, perimeter guarding, and part of the major incident response team that mobilised during the 7 July bombings.
• Acting as a major provider in the Building Schools for the Future programme where, working with the customer, we designed the environment and logistics based on the core purpose of the school's local requirement.
• Assistance to the Metropolitan Police during and following the 2011 summer riots in London through CCTV surveillance support.