By way of a recap regarding Friday's news of Working Link's collapse, this from the Guardian:-
Grayling attacked over 'disastrous' part-privatisation of probation service
Union bosses have condemned former justice secretary Chris Grayling’s “disastrous privatisation programme” after a probation services provider went into administration.
It was announced on Friday that Working Links, owned by the German-based asset management group, Aurelius, had collapsed. The same day, HM inspectorate of probation published a report saying that Working Links staff wrongly classified offenders as low-risk in order to meet government targets.
The provider was criticised in the report for allowing business imperatives to trump the quality of its services, which the inspectorate ranked as inadequate, warning that similar practices could be present in other regions of the UK.
The chief inspector of probation, Dame Glenys Stacey, said that Working Links probation staff in Dorset, Devon and Cornwall were “under-recording the number of riskier cases because of commercial pressures” and completing sentence plans without meeting the offender involved. In the report, the inspectorate said that the risk offenders posed to society had been downplayed just to meet government targets.
“Effort is focused disproportionately on reducing the risk of any further contractual (financial) penalty,” Stacey said. “For some professional staff, workloads are unconscionable. Most seriously, we have found professional ethics compromised and immutable lines crossed because of business imperatives.”
Grayling pushed through the transferral of 70% of the work done by the public probation service to private and voluntary sector providers in 2015, in what was called the most extensive privatisation in the criminal justice system ever. The National Probation Service (NPS) was created to deal with high-risk cases, while the remaining work was assigned to 21 community rehabilitation companies.
The justice secretary, David Gauke, was questioned over the inspectorate’s highly critical report in an interview on Saturday in which he recognised that the practices reported were clearly unacceptable. However, he rejected the suggestion that the partial privatisation of probation services had been a failure.
The shadow justice secretary, Richard Burgon, blamed Grayling and the Conservatives’ “obsession with privatisation” for the failures within the system, which he said needed to keep the public safe rather than “boost the profits of private companies”.
Napo, a union campaigning for probation services to be returned to public ownership, said it had repeatedly warned the government of the situation. “This is exactly what we warned the government about from day one of this disastrous privatisation programme that has seen an award-winning service fall into total chaos in just four years,” Napo’s general secretary, Ian Lawrence, said. “They admit it has failed and are ending the contracts early, but the situation with Working Links is beyond the pale.”
Kevin Brandstatter, a national officer for the GMB union, said services in the justice sector were not being delivered, while thousands of jobs had been sacrificed in an attempt to deliver profits. He warned that Interserve, “a company which totters from financial crisis to financial crisis” holds a number of similar contracts.
Cat Hobbs, director of We Own It, a group campaigning for public ownership, said management of offenders was a vital service that was “far too important to be subject to the whims of market forces.This should be a wake-up call for the government,” she said. “Irresponsible privatisation is wreaking havoc on our public services. Probation services should be brought in-house immediately, managed by the public sector.”
Aurelius announced last week it was selling the remaining parts of its public-sector businesses in the UK, with community rehabilitation services to be transferred to services company Seetec. “With the current sale, Aurelius has now withdrawn completely from the business of outsourced services for the public authorities in Great Britain,” it said. “The further development of this market will largely depend on public budgetary conditions. Government savings constraints have already led to a substantial consolidation of this industry in the past few years.”
Gauke also announced on Saturday the establishment of a new privately run scheme, Tags for Offenders, which will allow for the 24-hour GPS monitoring of offenders’ location.
--oo00oo--
The fact that Working Links was failing has been an open secret for months.This from the report to Napo's November 2018 NEC meeting:-
Since the last NEC it has become very clear the Working Links CRCs are in dire financial trouble despite the MoJ bail-out. This was admitted by Senior Working Links Management who revealed that crisis talks were taking place between their parent company Aurelius and the MoJ. The likelihood is that the MoJ will be ordered by the Ministers to shore up Working Links to the end of the current contract to save political face, but the possibility remains that these CRCs could be the first to fold.
Engagement takes place whilst the long-running dispute with the unions continues; we have recently had a reasonably constructive exchange with the CRC Chiefs which resulted in an agreement to consider the new Minimum Contract Specification (MCS), via a short sides meeting, that has been ordered by the MoJ, and which totally dismantles the flawed Operating Model which was one of the key factors, along with the failure to consult, that led to the dispute. It is understood that this exchange resulted in Working Links acknowledging the need to properly consult staff over the MCS.
Pay. There is absolutely no chance that Working Links will establish pay equity during the remaining lifetime of their contract but they may join us in common cause to lobby the MoJ for more resources, but I do not believe they will be allowed to rebid for the proposed contract package areas by Aurelius or the MoJ even if their Senior Managers were disposed to so do.
Since our last Pan-CRC meeting, the 1% contractual progression is to be paid out and a further 1% payment has been made to staff at Band 1 to ensure that the employer is matching the National Living Wage at least until April next year. Whilst this is a sign of their desperation, it represents movement of sorts. It remains to be seen whether these developments ease tensions with the Unions on a range of other issues.
--oo00oo--
Friday's email to staff from the KSS CEO contains much needed reassurance:-
Today MoJ has appointed Seetec to manage probation service's in the South West and Wales, following the parent company going into administration, employees and the caseloads will move immediately into the KSS CRC contract.
Colleagues in the region have done their best while being starved of financial and support over many months. As can be the way with legal processes, I only got clearance at 3pm from lawyers, administrators and the MoJ to talk with colleagues in the regions and explain more about what was happening. I am so impressed with the way they have worked relentlessly to support the people they work with in extremely difficult times, they deserve all our thanks and admiration for their professionalism, dedication and resilience.
What is also really clear to me is that following the work we've led on last year, we need to put probation values and purpose back at the heart of the service. The reality is that there is no magic bullet that stops people reoffending. It's about practice which builds relationships and uses quality interventions to try and lower risk. There's plenty of work to be done to invest in the service and provide practitioners with the professional autonomy they need to get the job done.
Suki Binning
CEO KSS
Colleagues in the region have done their best while being starved of financial and support over many months. As can be the way with legal processes, I only got clearance at 3pm from lawyers, administrators and the MoJ to talk with colleagues in the regions and explain more about what was happening. I am so impressed with the way they have worked relentlessly to support the people they work with in extremely difficult times, they deserve all our thanks and admiration for their professionalism, dedication and resilience.
What is also really clear to me is that following the work we've led on last year, we need to put probation values and purpose back at the heart of the service. The reality is that there is no magic bullet that stops people reoffending. It's about practice which builds relationships and uses quality interventions to try and lower risk. There's plenty of work to be done to invest in the service and provide practitioners with the professional autonomy they need to get the job done.
Suki Binning
CEO KSS
The principle of possibly satisfying government performance targets ahead of public safety may have originated in the National Standards of the early 1990s.
ReplyDeleteI think it's mistaken to blame performance. We are all interested in good performance, whether it's on the railways or the efficacy of health treatments. You can't get good performance in an underfunded service or when a public service ethic is undermined by a profit motive. In probation the obsession has been with crude measurements of throughputs, rather than on qualitative interventions and outcomes. Probation like all other public services has been subjected to a crude target culture for many years, but privatisation, not performance is the real villain here.
DeleteWhen National Standards were first introduced it was sold to us as a set of MINIMUM standards that would ensure consistency on some basics accross the independent Trusts. The morph to these being targets is where it became utterly rotten, the decay hastened by developing IT. IT systems esp for case management are designed to serve the performance target bandwagon. That they are SO effing useless as a tool for practitioners is symptomatic.
DeleteInterserve probably next. question is who else is in a dodgy way?
ReplyDelete"The reality is that there is no magic bullet that stops people reoffending. It's about practice which builds relationships and uses quality interventions to try and lower risk."
ReplyDeleteHowever welcome the expressed support for ex-WL staff is, never forget...
... its amazing how, when shit hits a fan, all those who colluded in & profited from generating the shit suddenly decide that the shit is toxic, and reinvent themselves in an instant. Grifters, liars & bullies.
Sadly many people these days have the attention span of a goldfish, so the many twists & turns of the unscrupulous grifters are lost in the warm glow of their most recent missive. Its merely another PR stunt. Once the initial excitement & comforting hugs have faded there'll be shit sandwiches all round again.
DeleteAnd that's why I think this blog is important as it plays a key role in archiving who, what, why, where & when.
'The justice secretary, David Gauke, ... rejected the suggestion that the partial privatisation of probation services had been a failure.'
ReplyDeleteEh?!
From BBC's Danny Shaw: "Justice Sec @DavidGauke says we need ‘smart justice’ not ‘soft or hard’. We are the most punitive since Thatcher’s day, he says. It’s time for a “fresh conversation” & a “national debate” about what works."
DeleteThere’s a “strong case” says @DavidGauke for switching resources from prison sentences to probation #reformjustice
Deleteerm, "... its amazing how, when shit hits a fan, all those who colluded in & profited from generating the shit suddenly decide that the shit is toxic, and reinvent themselves in an instant. Grifters, liars & bullies."
ith every passing day the “rescue” of stricken outsourcer Interserve looks more and more like a stitch-up of shocking proportions. As a reminder, here are the terms of this potty deal cooked up by a management team so out of its depth they should be made to carry around inflatable armbands.
ReplyDeleteInterserve in Telegraph (paywall): "The company, which cleans the London Underground, and has 45,000 employees in the United Kingdom, has agreed a debt-for-equity swap that all but wipes out shareholders and hands control to its lenders, including the fund Emerald Investment Partners...."
The Tories and Chris Failing didn't just split probation into NPS and CRC. It was split between NPS and 21 CRCs.
ReplyDeleteI think even the MoJ are realising that things can't go on as they are, hence the early termination of contracts.
All inspections of CRCs have been sub srandard, and now Working Links have folded, and there's a real possibility of Interserve going the same way in the next month or two.
In any event, would companies like Interserve actually want to bid for a CRC contract again?
I think Seetecs move to take over the Working Links CRCs is interesting. It makes no business sense unless they are assured of keeping them when they're next tendered. Could giving Seetec the Working links contracts signal the first step towards a sort of reunification? Not between NPS and CRC, but the first move in trying to unify all the CRCs by outsourcing them all to a single provider?
It just can't be allowed to remain as it is.
'Getafix
Another idea from @DavidGauke : monitor & restrict fraudsters when they’re freed from prison so they don’t lead “comfortable & luxurious” lifestyles #reformjustice
ReplyDeleteAre you listening, Grayling, Romeo, Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Brennan, Spurr, etc etc etc
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-47271864
ReplyDeleteProbation services should be brought back under public control immediately in order to protect the public, Plaid Cymru's justice spokesperson has said.
DeleteThe system was partially privatised in 2014, but when the service was left in a "mess" the UK government decided it would end its contracts early in 2020.
Private firms providing services in Wales and south-west England went into administration last week.
Liz Saville Roberts MP called for immediate renationalisation.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said it was working to arrange an "earlier transition" to the new system.
Conner Marshall: Killer's probation monitoring 'shambolic'
Probation system 'a mess' despite reforms, say MPs
Probation services face radical overhaul in Wales
Speaking on BBC Radio Wales's Sunday Supplement, Ms Saville Roberts said the overhaul announced last year would see Wales rid of privately-run probation services when contracts ended next year.
She called for the process to be fast-tracked, following the collapse of the Working Links community rehabilitation companies (CRC).
"Surely we should be bringing back probation into public control in Wales," the Dwyfor Meirionydd MP said. "Surely this should be done now."
Ms Saville Roberts claimed the "profit motive" for private firms of keeping offenders out of prison put the public at risk.
She used the example of Conner Marshall, from Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan, who was murdered by David Braddon at a Porthcawl caravan park in March 2015.
Braddon was being monitored by probation workers after being convicted of drugs offences and assaulting a police officer when he murdered the 18-year-old.
"Conner was murdered four years ago by a man who was on probation, being supervised by Working Links," she said.
"We know that the murderer of Conner Marshall breached his probation conditions eight times.
"We know in the majority of these times, what he had done should have been sufficient to send him back to prison."
The MoJ said that Seetec, the parent company of the Kent, Surrey and Sussex CRC, would take over delivery of probation services in south and west Wales.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/justice-secretary-david-gauke-sets-out-long-term-for-justice
ReplyDelete“if we want to successfully make a shift from prison to community sentences it is critical that we have a probation system that commands the confidence of the courts and the public”.
"In thinking strategically about the future of our justice system I believe in the end there is a strong case for switching resource away from ineffective prison sentences and into probation. This is more likely to reduce reoffending and, ultimately, reduce pressures on our criminal justice system."
"I am determined to strengthen the confidence courts have in probation to ensure we can make this shift away from short custodial sentences towards more punitive and effective sanctions and support in the community."
Why isn’t there a by-election when an MP defects from one political party to another?
ReplyDeleteThere are no rules requiring the resignation of an MP who leaves one political party for another. A convention that the Member changing parties does not resign to fight a by-election accords with the arguments of Edmund Burke in the late 18th century. This MP, himself a rebel in a number of policy areas, considered that a Member was a representative rather than a delegate. Historically, the Commons has acted on the principle that all Members of the House of Commons are individually elected, and voters put a “cross against the name of a candidate”. While decisions on candidates may be affected by their party labels, MPs are free to develop their own arguments once elected, until it is time to face the voters in the next general election.
Are there any sanctions or other forms of discouragement which could be imposed on an MP for leaving the party on whose behalf she/he was elected?
There are no formal sanctions but discouragement comes in many forms, including: reaction of former party colleagues and the electorate. Although Members who change party allegiance during the course of a Parliament, rarely stand for their new party in the same constituency at the following election, crossing the floor does not mean political death. There are examples of Members being found safe seats by their new party and even taking their place on the front bench.
Is there any pressure to take action against Members who defect?
Occasionally there are calls for Members to resign or for by-elections to be triggered if they change parties. For example, in 2010, it was suggested that “Members should be required to cause a by-election if they defect to a different party from the one on whose manifesto they were elected”. However, the Government said that such a change would be “a major constitutional reform of the role of Members of Parliament and their independence” and that it had “no plans to do that”.
Ok people so what about the money WLinks have stolen from their probationer clients. Living outside the city entitles the probationer to travel expenses, bus/petrol etc. (I daresay WLinks and tier CRCs embezzled this money from the government without passing it on)
ReplyDeleteSo who do they now make a claim against? The CRC now being run by Seetec, the administrators of WLinks? Arailius? or who?
Answers on a postcard pls
no ideas?
DeleteFrom govt submissions under EU contract regulation:
ReplyDeleteKSS amendments to contract in July 2017:
* contract value BEFORE the modifications: £172,845,000
* contract value after the modifications: £183,081,000
= contract value increase of £10,236,000.00
Following further 2018 contract variations shortening the tenure to 5 years & other adjustments:
If £183,081,000 was for the initial 7 years (2015-2022), then the shortened contracts would presumably be:
(183,081,000/7) x 5 = £130,772,142 total value
2018 Contract shows new value = £142,616,280.00
That's yet another increase of £11,844,138, which equates to £22,120,138 over and above the original contract value. Add to that their share of the Modernisation Fund bung (intended to cover redundancy costs) and its a substantial increase over what the MoJ claimed they were paying. Transparency? Lets have some clarity please, MoJ.
***This principle no doubt applies to all 21 CRCs***
Interesting sums on a trader site suggesting how the Lenders planning to takeover at Interserve will make a huge profit out of struggling Interserve & the debt-for-equity (dfe) deal:
ReplyDelete- Lenders get 6.15bn shares @8p making business value £492m
- Lenders then own 97.5% of the business or £479.7m
PLUS they are still owed the £350m outstanding debt so…
… Lenders hold £829.7m
- This exceeds the current Interserve debt of £755m, so they are immediately in profit by £74m
What is the 8p share really worth?
12p? This values the company at £640m; add the £350m outstanding debt = £990m
16p? This values the company at £800m + £350m o/s debt = £1.15bn
*** Not a single thought about people ***
Aye, there's the rub.
https://www.scottishlegal.com/article/england-calls-for-justice-sector-to-be-free-of-private-interests-as-probation-companies-go-bust
ReplyDelete