6 October 2022
Dear Lord Chancellor,
The Prison Governors’ Association (PGA) welcomes you to your new role as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. Your portfolio is demanding, and we wish you well as you navigate the complexities and competing priorities of your new role. A measure of your success undoubtedly sits in the hands of our members, who fill some of the most senior roles both in prisons and headquarters. Your success, and legacy as Lord Chancellor will, above all else, be gauged by public critique of our prisons. It is our members you must enable to deliver the aspirations of Government, and not see our service as a cash cow in an economic crisis.
Although the PGA feels compelled to write to you spelling out our concerns for the future of the Prison Service, we are committed to working collaboratively to get the best possible outcomes across HMPPS, and it is appropriate to state that your CEO, DG and senior operational leaders in HMPPS retain our support and confidence. Whilst we have seen frequent and significant changes within ministerial teams across many Governments over several years, it is our members who have remained a constant within HMPPS. They are the experts: they are the best in their field, and we ask that you do not demand they make financial savings to an already impoverished agency.
It is likely that you will be asking your department heads to identify and make significant savings to help reduce the financial burden our country is under. This is nothing new to HMPPS: recent history has shown what a disastrous impact the austerity years had on the agency and its ability to provide the most basic of services. Our prison system was decimated by catastrophic cuts without the corresponding reduction in prison population. We lost a generation of improvements in decency and safety; our prisons were cited as being the most violent place to work across Europe.
The loss of thousands of years of prison officer experience through redundancy, followed by a much-reduced pay and reward package, caused untold damage to the staffing position and ability to maintain safe regimes. All of this was to support a fiscal ideology and did nothing to safeguard those who lived, worked, or expected protection from those in custody.
The level of disinvestment and efficiencies demanded by Government during the austerity period resulted in near total breakdown of the prison system. Scrutiny, both from external and internal bodies, has described a prison system that was broken and on its knees. Government austerity measures have resulted in untold harm and damage being caused to those within the prison system, either working or living in it. The PGA will not stand by quietly and let this happen again.
We are still seeing the impact of austerity in our Service. We have a pay system which was designed to drive out cost. Fair and Sustainable (F&S) saw the reduction of prison officer pay to unfair and unsustainable levels. Recent attempts by the Prison Service Pay Review Body to remedy some of the recruitment and retention issues caused by this out-of-date pay system were rejected by Government. This unwillingness to invest in our people is one reason our Service is in such a perilous position.
HMPPS were placed in the invidious position of implementing Government cuts or face the prospect of widespread or wholesale privatisation. Our most senior leaders were asked to make decisions no-one should be expected to make. We saw an increase in demand on prison capacity, at the same time the levels of investment in capital maintenance were at near non-existent levels. We saw the system wide dissection of prison maintenance, which placed the day-to-day upkeep out to the market with devastating effect. The lack of investment over many years in the crumbling prison estate was exposed in report after report from external scrutiny bodies; long term and sustained investment in the prison estate is still required and must not be put at risk or threatened by cuts.
The benchmarking process to deliver the cuts left prisons dangerously understaffed, allowing organised crime gangs and more bullish prisoners to fill and control the void where larger numbers of experienced staff used to be. The results of this change in the cultural dynamic led to dramatic increases in suicide, self-harm and violence as evidenced by the Ministry of Justice’s own statisticians and a workforce who entered their workplace fearful for their health and safety.
It is important to state that this austerity was imposed on a prison system which was hitherto functioning well. Safety was improving and decency was underpinning the delivery of its core function. The impact of the savage cuts was immediate and devastating: so deep were these cuts that recovery to pre austerity levels of safety a decade later has not been achieved. Covid may have played a part, but the main blocker to recovery is inadequate resources for the job required.
Rolling forward to right now and we are seeing further decline in our more challenging prisons. The recruitment and retention issue remains at crisis point with leavers outstripping joiners. Some prisons are running at 50% non-effectives in their staffing profiles. Regimes are impoverished, resulting in prisoners becoming frustrated and angry at constant lock up and unpredictable daily routines. Staff bear the brunt of this with violence and disorder against them; is it any wonder our attrition rate is too high in such a working environment? The mental health and wellbeing of all grades of staff in these prisons has reached an unacceptable level.
The PGA is becoming increasingly worried at the country’s financial picture and what it means for prisons. Media coverage and commentators over recent weeks are following a line that the new Government will enforce “iron discipline” over public spending to restore its battered fiscal credibility. This has been confirmed by the Prime Minister in her keynote speech to the Conservative Party Conference this week. They also report that the mood music from Whitehall is that a further period of austerity is in the offing. It is imperative that we state loud and clear to you that we already have a prison system which in many areas has not recovered from previous austerity and is still broken. To expect efficiencies against this backdrop is a recipe for disaster and we are totally opposed to it. History has shown in graphic detail what happens if you don’t invest properly in prisons. We have seen first-hand both the personal and professional impact working in a broken system has on our members, let alone the lost opportunities to help reduce reoffending and protect the public.
The PGA is becoming increasingly worried at the country’s financial picture and what it means for prisons. Media coverage and commentators over recent weeks are following a line that the new Government will enforce “iron discipline” over public spending to restore its battered fiscal credibility. This has been confirmed by the Prime Minister in her keynote speech to the Conservative Party Conference this week. They also report that the mood music from Whitehall is that a further period of austerity is in the offing. It is imperative that we state loud and clear to you that we already have a prison system which in many areas has not recovered from previous austerity and is still broken. To expect efficiencies against this backdrop is a recipe for disaster and we are totally opposed to it. History has shown in graphic detail what happens if you don’t invest properly in prisons. We have seen first-hand both the personal and professional impact working in a broken system has on our members, let alone the lost opportunities to help reduce reoffending and protect the public.
The removal of someone’s liberty is the greatest sanction a civilised society can place on one of its citizens, there is no greater sanction. To protect the public and have any hope of rehabilitating those who are locked up costs a significant amount of money. Our prisons are overcrowded, and the overall population too high. If the cost of imprisonment on this scale is not affordable to Government, we ask you to take swift action to reduce the demand placed on prison spaces. This needs to be bold and see a significant reduction at a time when we are not able to recruit and retain prison officers in the required numbers.
For as long as we can recall, HMPPS has had efficiency savings at the forefront of its own budget strategy, and as such we believe there is no more to be taken out. There needs to be public acceptance from Government that if prisons are to be places which are safe and support rehabilitation then HMPPS must see increases in resources and not be subject to arbitrary budget cuts. If this is something Government will not accept, they will carry the risk of prisons becoming warehouses for those society do not wish to see. This is not something we want or accept.
Therefore, we ask that you take urgent action to address the current crisis in our prisons by focusing on the following:
- A public commitment to maintain funding of HMPPS to deliver all recent White Paper objectives.
- A public commitment to accept future Prison Service Pay Review Body recommendations.
- Take action to deliver an immediate and sustained reduction in the overall prison population.
Yours sincerely,
Prison Governors’ Association National Executive Committee
Andrea Albutt
President
Mitch Albutt
National Officer
Carl Davies
National Officer
cc. Amy Rees, Director General Chief Executive Officer, HMPPS
Phil Copple, Director General of Operations, HMPPS
Francis Stuart, Head of Employee Relations, HMPPS
Dawn Orchard, Senior HR Liaison Manager, ER, HMPPS
Today's Observer:-
ReplyDeleteTeaching assistants quitting schools for supermarkets because of ‘joke’ wages
Headteachers across the country say they cannot fill vital teaching assistant vacancies and that support staff are taking second jobs in supermarkets to survive because their wages are “just a joke”.
Schools are reporting that increasing numbers of teaching assistants are leaving because they will not be able to pay for high energy bills and afford food this winter. And with job ads often attracting no applications at all, heads fear they will be impossible to replace. They warn this will have a serious impact on children in the classroom, especially those with special educational needs, and will make it increasingly hard for teachers to focus on teaching.
Sam Browne, headteacher at Radnage Church of England primary school in Buckinghamshire, said one of his most highly skilled TAs resigned a week ago in tears because she loved her job but wasn’t earning enough to manage.
“She has a child in nursery and by the time she has paid for childcare fees she is making £10 a day,” he said. “That was difficult before, but now she can’t survive.”
He added: “The pay for TAs and support staff is just a joke.”
Heads say they will struggle to fund the £1,925 pay rise for support staff, offered by local authorities with no extra cash for schools at the beginning of the summer. But they also argue it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Long Furlong primary school in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, has been advertising for over a year for a TA to provide one-to-one support for a vulnerable child with special needs. They have two similar vacancies and are on their fifth round of advertising.
Carol Dunne, the school’s headteacher, said: “I have just posted the ad on social media again, alongside an ad for the local Aldi which pays £11.40 an hour. Our position pays £10 an hour. So they will get more working in a supermarket.” Dunne added that one good candidate pulled out recently when she realised that she would be “worse off working at the school than on benefits”.
Claire Pegler, a full-time TA in a primary school in Gloucestershire, currently does evening and weekend shifts at a supermarket to keep her head above water. She told the Observer: “I’m on the edge and don’t know what to do. I don’t want to leave the school, but I’m considering whether I will be able to cope better working full-time at the supermarket.”
Well after our crappy 3% Probation Service pay offer which can’t help with the rising costs of living I’m weighing up options of the dole queue, Only Fans or Lidl. As my manager says #BOAL (Better off at Lidl).
DeleteWell the Probation Service has no chance because probation bosses (Regional Probation Directors) will not speak out against the Ministry of Justice or government. Just as they all followed instructions to support TR, Unification and the recent abysmal 3% pay offer. They’ll wait until the last minute when cuts and reforms are imposed, tell us how lucky we are and expect we say “Please Sir, can I have some more”.
ReplyDeletePublic services have been decimated by the Tories over the last 12 years.
ReplyDeleteTheir ideology sees these services as being part of a welfare or nanny state.
They're not really interested whether services are functional or not, because they dont have to use them.
Terese Coffey laid out her plan to fix the NHS ambulance crisis at the Tory party conference. She says shes going to recruit more emergency call handlers. All that will do will create more people to answer 999 calls that will tell you that you will still have to wait 18 hours for an ambulance because there isn't enough, or because it takes so many hours to drive from Manchester to York and that's where are ambulances are contracted from.
I'm minded of the £billions spent on emergency Covid hospitals that were never used. Why? Because there wasn't enough medical staff to run them. But that's just been quietly swept under the carpet.
I read the following article this morning that suggests that the government may be making the same mistake with its prison building programme. Building super prisons is one thing. The private sector benefits with multi million contracts. But how do staff them and make them functional from a starved and decimated public sector?
Our current PM couldn't give a jot about that question. She's far too busy playing the lead role in her own fantasy drama of her perceived perception of how she'll be remembered by future generations. That, and trying to convince her own party that she's what a 'propper' Tory looks like.
https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/23033073.raf-prison-plans-gross-misallocation-taxpayers-money/
'Getafix
Tories don't care for anything than using the institutions to net all the cash so they are future proof as they lose power. They do it every generation. Britain votes them and deserves what it gets .
DeleteExactly sold off gas oil electricity rail telecoms royal mail water steel council homes justices watered buildings dockyards transport coal the lot. How is this working for us a few boards of private share holders taking all the riches in unearned incomes banking British people's money in exorbitant profits charging. Gouging us while we now have no infrastructure. The Tories cloth is wearing thin. Can Britain be this stupid again?
DeleteYes course it can .
THE campaign group fighting proposals for two mega prisons at a former RAF base in rural Essex says the Ministry of Justice needs to reflect on evidence which describes the plans as a “gross misallocation of taxpayers’ money”.
DeleteTwo huge prisons holding more than 3,400 inmates could be built on land near the former Wethersfield RAF base, if government plans are carried out
The Ministry of Justice has published proposals for the new mega prisons, set to house 3,430 people, at the former cold war air base to the north of Braintree.
The site will hold category B and category C adult male prisoners in two prisons that each have a total capacity of 1,715, according to documents setting out the plans.
But Dr Richard Sidebottom and Frank Easton, who carried out research for Stop Wethersfield Airfield Prisons, have indicated in their report “People, Place and Performance: Are rural Mega prisons in the national interest?” that large, rural prisons bring numerous issues.
These include problems with prisons of more than 1,000 inmates that they say have below average performance scores.
The report adds that prisoners held some distance from home and in a remote and rural location, create significant performance issues.
Inaccessibility is a major impediment to the rehabilitative purpose of several rural prisons and there is evidence that contact with families is a proven factor in reducing reoffending, the report adds.
The proposed prisons site at RAF Wethersfield overlaps a catchment area for employees with Highpoint, near Haverhill and Chelmsford as well as Wayland in Thetford and Littlehey in Huntingdon.
Retention of employment of prison officers is already a major problem for the prisons service, they add.
The report concludes: “From the evidence used in our report, the case that the construction of Mega prisons is in the national interest is unproven particularly in rural areas.
“To invest hundreds of millions without unequivocal evidence would appear to be a gross misallocation of taxpayers’ money.”
I watch NHS work places with food banks with envy. As admin and PSOs would also earn more in Aldi I am actually thankful we are finally getting some sort of payrise even if it’s a bit rubbish
DeleteCould have got a lot more of you held out. Barristers got 15% because they held out.
DeleteI wish people would stop pedaling this lie that we only got 3%
ReplyDelete