Custody and Community Debate

From time to time contributions come in that seem particularly noteworthy, but are in danger of being 'lost' in amongst a number of matters being discussed. I'm not a user of Linkedin, but I feel the following discussions seem worthy of note and consideration:- 

This may need to be added over a few comments. I came across an interesting discussion on LinkedIn today about the widening divide between custody and community perspectives on probation training, recruitment, and retention. On one side, a custody SPO (and others) argue that prison staff should not only be paid more than community staff to train as probation officers, but also recognised as stronger rehabilitation professionals, even suggesting that Napo should be absorbed into the POA. On the other, a community SPO (and others) respond highlighting the distinct skills, ethos, and culture of probation practice, stressing that the real focus should be on fair pay, retention, and valuing the unique role of probation staff. Then there are those who sit somewhere in between.

My own view? Frankly, I’m not surprised by the custody SPO’s position, it reflects the wider tone of HMPPS towards probation. You can’t justify paying one group more to complete the same training others are paid less for. And the worst thing probation could do right now is move closer to the prison model, when in truth, it should be finding its way back to independence from it, and back towards social work values. I agree that Napo, in its current form, holds little weight to support probation staff, but that says more about its poor leadership and lack of clear identity and silly name, than about the need for a strong, dedicated union.

There’s a reason why probation models and youth justice services that use social workers are thriving. How difficult would it really be to take the £700 million set aside for tagging and AI, and instead invest it into a 20% pay rise across all probation bands, while giving all qualified probation officers and senior probation officers the all expenses paid fast track option to top up their qualifications to align with a Diploma in Social Work? That’s not radical, it’s just common sense. Probation recruitment and retention would go through the roof.Either way, it’s an important debate, and if you’re on LinkedIn (for what it’s worth), you might want to join in too.

The discussion:

Senior Probation Officer - OMiC writes:

From Custody to Community: How Joined-Up Thinking Could Solve the Retention Crisis:

HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) is facing a serious staffing challenge. Recent data shows that around 12% of prison officers left the service in the past year, while around 7% of probation officers also moved on.

The qualification issue: 

Within HMPPS, the early-career routes couldn’t look more different. On the custody side, you’ve got the Unlocked Graduates scheme — a two-year leadership programme aimed at high-calibre graduates, often including a master’s in Applied Custodial Leadership. These officers work directly on the landings, managing behaviour, leading culture change and helping people in custody turn a corner.

Then there’s the Professional Qualification in Probation (PQiP) — the pathway to becoming a fully qualified Probation Officer. It blends academic study with hands-on training in the community, supporting people on licence, managing risk and guiding rehabilitation beyond the prison walls. What I see: As a Senior Probation Officer working in OMiC, I get a rare view into both worlds. And honestly? Every week, hundreds of officers on the landings are already doing informal probation work — supporting resettlement plans, calming parole anxieties, talking about change and future risks.

So why don’t more Prison Officers take the step into probation? I manage 7 incredible Prison Offender Managers. If one wanted to retrain as a Probation Officer, they’d have to take roughly a £12,000 pay cut for two years, and then spend another four slowly climbing back to their current wage. That’s not a transition, that’s a punishment for ambition.

The union tug-of-war: 

Since the unification of the Prison and Probation services, HMPPS has struggled to truly align its policies, recruitment or culture. Part of that comes from the POA and NAPO pulling in different directions — both doing their jobs protecting members’ interests, but often reinforcing the divide instead of bridging it. Rehabilitation needs to be prioritised over politics.

My proposal: unify and empower: Here’s what I believe HMPPS could do:

1. Unify the graduate pathways – merge Unlocked and PQiP into a shared entry route, offering placements across custody and community, without one being seen as “the better” option.

2. Align pay and progression – no more financial penalties for moving between the two arms of the service.

3. Recognise experience – if a Prison Offender Manager has proven themselves over several years, with strong management feedback, let them complete PQiP on their current salary.

Imagine the possibilities: Unified training. Shared pay structure. It’s not radical, it’s logical. The people, the skills and the passion already exist inside HMPPS. We just need to make it easier for them to move, grow and stay. Let’s make “crossing the line” between prison and probation an opportunity, not a career setback.

Senior Probation Officer - Community responds:

Really thoughtful post. It’s pragmatic to look at options, but also to remember that while there are crossovers these can be very different jobs, reflecting the distinct cultures of custody and community even within HMPPS. Probation has always had a rehabilitation and social work ethos, attracting to the training both graduates and those with valuable life or second-career experience, including many from prisons, the military, police, youth justice and the third sector.

If unions secure better pay, that will help attract and retain great staff. But I’d doubt they’d be any merging professional identities, many still see Napo as the distinct professional voice for probation, perhaps increasingly the Probation Institute is too.

I’d also like to see more inclusion of those with Lived Experience in accessing probation training which has long been acknowledged as a thing. [See Prisoners today Professionals tomorrow.] 

And maybe, call me old school, a return to “advise, assist and befriend,” as I wrote here. In concluding I consider what the future could look like too. 

Senior Probation Officer - OMiC responds to Senior Probation Officer - Community:

Completely with you — although I’d also say that, informally, “advise, assist and befriend” has almost become the quiet mantra for many prison officers these days, while the Probation Service has, somewhat ironically, drifted into being seen as the more punitive arm of HMPPS (just think of recall).

I’ll always be a champion for unions (spot the Labour voter). But controversially, I do think NAPO’s influence outweighs its actual size. It feels like a small union that punches well above its weight in terms of narrative and policy sway. I’d be curious to see the numbers, what percentage of the Probation Service are actually NAPO members?

I also don’t agree with NAPO’s stance on dissolving HMPPS. In my view, the Probation Service would be significantly weaker without that structural alignment. The truth is that the average Joe Bloggs doesn’t fully understand what probation does, nor its value to public protection. Without that connection to the prison service, the incentive to prioritise funding, wage increases, or recruitment would likely shrink even further. Dissolving HMPPS might sound empowering in theory, but in practice it risks leaving probation more isolated and under-resourced than ever.

Senior Probation Officer - Community further responds to Senior Probation Officer- OMiC:

I see a lot of good rehabilitation and reintegration work happening in probation offices.It’s fair to say that identity has become a key challenge, not just in England and Wales, but across Europe. It’s also something I wrote about recently, exploring how probation can reclaim and shape its identity. Perhaps Napo shares a similar concern, without a clear and credible identity, distinct from punishment or risk-led narratives, probation risks being misunderstood and constrained by external pressures.

I concluded, and I think this is where we probably agree, that “the future of probation lies in evidence-based reform, practitioner development, and adequate resourcing.” It’s a conversation we should all be part of, and well done for putting your ideas out there. [See Shaping Probations Identity]

Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice responds to Senior Probation Officer- OMiC:

Managing high risk and very high ROSH in the community takes skill and experience balancing risk, criminogenic needs and building a meaningful rapport take time to learn and implement. There are key skills within this mix that just aren't being taught early enough through traditional qualifications. Qualifications should align to the job role. A very real problem we have is offering criminology qualifications that offer no opportunity to access criminal justice agencies or provide students with a skill set required to make it in criminal justice.There isn't enough happening in our schools to show prison or probabtion jobs as attractive

Well-being Consultant responds to Senior Probation Officer- OMiC:

This is really interesting to read , there's also conversations to be had about why staff are leaving. As an ex senior probation officer myself I've heard of so many staff leaving owing to poor mental health and management. Staffing includes retention.

Financial Investigator responds to Senior Probation Officer- OMiC: 

Why “From Custody to Community” Sounds Great — But Wouldn’t Work (Yet) The idea of merging prison and probation pathways under one unified entry route sounds smart: shared training, smoother transitions, and stronger collaboration. But in practice, it’s not that simple.
Different roles, different skills. Custody work focuses on safety, order, and behaviour management. Probation is about risk assessment, rehabilitation, and community reintegration. Blending them risks diluting both professions. 

Training and accreditation gaps. Unlocked and PQiP have distinct standards and academic structures. Unifying them would require rewriting qualification frameworks and rebuilding university partnerships — a huge reform effort.

Culture and identity. Prison and probation services have very different working cultures and priorities. Without deeper organisational alignment, a joint route could cause confusion rather than cohesion. Pay parity won’t solve retention. Matching salaries helps, but it doesn’t fix core issues like workload, burnout, or lack of support.

Union and structural barriers. POA and NAPO protect different workforces. Blurring boundaries would trigger long negotiations over representation and progression. Food for thought.

Unlocked Graduates Ambassador responds to Senior Probation Officer- OMiC:

This is an interesting take. Sadly the unlocked programme is not likely to be recruiting a cohort for a while because they haven’t come to a procurement agreement with the government. As someone who’s just left the prison service (and an unlocked ambassador), I can say that the opportunity for prison officers to do real rehabilitative work is currently in direct conflict with how prisons are run (think regime, regime, regime) and the prioritization of security. I personally really had to carve out opportunities on my own - which often meant putting in many more hours than the core working day. I’m now looking at joining the probation service myself, so would definitely welcome an approach like the one you suggest - I wonder if it is something that has ever been considered in policy.

Andrew Bridges responds to Senior Probation Officer- OMiC: 

It’s not just the unions who won’t like your idea, Ed. Your point about the disincentives to ‘career progression’ within Probation is not new, but very well made here, and in broad terms I’d support it, based on my views about many PSOs over the years, as well as Prison Officers. There are many interests that would resist such a radical rethink. 

End

Thats it - That’s not radical. It’s just common sense. Agree or disagree, these are the conversations probation needs — not led by academics or think tanks, but by the people doing the work every day, willing to stand up, speak out, and be heard.

*******

1. Unify the graduate pathways – merge Unlocked and PQiP into a shared entry route, offering placements across custody and community, without one being seen as “the better” option.

- No. They’re two different courses for two fundamentally different roles.

2. Align pay and progression – no more financial penalties for moving between the two arms of the service.

- Yes. Probation staff should receive the same pay rises and bonuses already given to those in prisons. Equality works both ways.

3. Recognise experience – if a Prison Offender Manager has proven themselves over several years, with strong management feedback, let them complete PQiP on their current salary.

- No. That would mean prison staff being paid more than probation trainees for the same qualification and role, or even matching the pay of internal probation PSOs on the progression pathway. In fact, with prison pay rises and bonuses, they’d end up earning more. That’s unequal pay, plain and simple.

Imagine the possibilities: Unified training. Shared pay structure.

- Not if it erases the identity and value of the probation service. This is what happens when prison-led management drives the agenda. Next you’ll be arguing locking cell doors compares to probation work!

Final thought:

It’s not radical, it’s ridiculous. And that’s what happens when you use AI to draft a proposal to “unify and empower” a broken service like HMPPS.

*******

Fully agree with you. I think most of our problems have stemmed from being so intertwined with the Prisons (as do most commentators on here I believe) Probation should go back to being seen as an Alternative to custody not an extension of custody as we in all sense are today. Prisons have it relatively easy in the sense they can lock them away, seg them, and chuck them out even if they have no address or referrals to support services. They don't have to worry about SFO's unless they stupidly wrongly release them which with today's technology beggers belief. It's not a comparable job apart from we deal with the same people, but that's like saying a brain surgeon and a chiropodist have a similar role...

********

Shows how disconnected from reality probation managers are once they step through the prisons gate. They have to say all that as they’re line managed by prison governors which makes no sense at all. How Prison Officers are submitting a 26/27 payclaim when probation staff get nothing is beyond me.

A Paper Mouse With No Gnashers

Nothing seems to change with these reports. They get made. There's a bit of tract and then nothing and then another report and so on and so forth. It's a paper mouse with no gnashers. It's no wonder staff are fatigued from filling in the People's Survey, to give us the illusion that our voice is being heard, when most just want more money and this is constantly fudged like the Cadbury's factory. The country is still slavishly listening to the raged majority in the Shires and the investment-starved inner cites who want to bring back executions, frontier justice, the mass deportation of immigrants; the belief that all sex offenders are off small boats; the dim-bulbed misunderstanding of what a minimum tariff for a life sentence is: "they'll be out in 8 years. Not long enough." 

So, we get prisons being front and centre of this thirst for vengeance and no wonder Probation is starved of investment- it's not an appeasement to the baying mob. As far as recruitment goes: this is constantly in flux. It doesn't take into consideration those wanting to leave now or are thinking of leaving and the number of new recruits who may not stay the distance, which is between 24 and 32 months after PO status without NQO and completion of the PQIP has been achieved, because the culture at a given a PDU may not be conducive to a person's circumstances or working practice. Cliques, favouritism, factions, staff using leverage, side hustles that lead to exemptions, meaning more work for others; some factors that come into play in a PDU that are hidden until you get there. Probation often doesn't help itself with the culture it creates and normalises, because it is what it is becomes the status quo

*******
[above] has nailed it - report after report after report after report, but no-one gives a flying fuck what they say; they make no difference to the day-to-day reality... people get paid shitloads more to prepare & publish the reports than those trying to deliver what the reports blather on about. casey has made a fortune out of being a professional "cszar"; chairs of enquiries get paid £hundreds-of-thousands over the period of the hearings they preside over; judges get their salaries PLUS whatever the hearing daily rate is.

What's the fucking point? As someone else has already highlighted, the first NAO report on TR was predicated on govt lies & misinformation... just because a report matches your prejudice doesn't mean its accurate. The situation for probation staff is dire, whether you're new or existing or long-serving. Management is a non-sequitur, in the majority of cases its simply a label for collusive shitweasel (there are always exceptional exceptions).

*******
HMPPS’s ‘Our Future Probation Programme’ is not bold and innovative approach, it’s nonsense and I cringe every time I hear it. If HMPPS acknowledges that the Probation Service is currently unsustainable then why isn’t it adequately paid and resourcing probation staff. The fix isn’t rocket science, but let’s see how quick they farm in Serco, Sodexo, G4S and others to do the “extra work” the prison crisis and so called reforms are generating. It’s been said time and again, even on this blog, until probation is separated from prisons, the civil service and political meddling, there will be no change.

If probation is unable to develop a clear and credible identity, distinct from narratives around punishment, public safety, use of technology, cost-effectiveness, or custody alternatives, and to resist the urge to overpromise on risk management, public protection, and crime control, then it will continue to face the challenge of misrepresentation. Without a clearly defined identity, probation remains vulnerable to external pressures, limiting its autonomy and effectiveness to dust.

Damning NAO Report

Nicely timed for the weekend, but no matter, here we have a damning report from the NAO with yet further evidence that reunification under civil service control has been utterly disastrous for the Probation Service. 

There is zero chance that any of the NAO recommendations can be met under the present arrangements. At what point do wise heads just say, as with TR, we're going in completely the wrong direction and probation must go back to local control and autonomy, when of course it was a gold standard service. NAO press release:-

Government must actively manage plan to boost weak Probation Service performance

• In 2024-25, HMPPS met only 26% of its targets, a drop of 24 percentage points since 2021-22.
• HMPPS has been recruiting more probation staff, but in 2024 found it had underestimated the number of staff required to provide sentence management tasks by around a third (5,400 staff).
• To mitigate the impact on offender outcomes and public protection, HMPPS and MoJ must actively manage the risks associated with its innovative programme to reduce Probation Service workloads.

Risks in the government’s plans to ease workload pressure on the Probation Service must be fully understood and actively managed to ensure it can achieve its aims of rehabilitating offenders and protecting the public, amid worsening performance in the service due to inexperienced staff and gaps in critical roles.1,2

The Probation Service aims to protect the public by managing any risks offenders pose when they leave prison or receive community sentences, and by reducing the chance of them reoffending through supporting rehabilitation in the community.

But a new National Audit Office (NAO) report has found that the service has remained under significant strain since it returned to full public ownership in June 2021 following a major reorganisation. In 2024-25, performance dropped by 24 percentage points compared with 2021-22 levels.3 And some areas of performance are worse than others: in 2024, probation practitioners adequately assessed risk of harm from offenders in just 28% of cases, compared with 60% in 2018-19.4

Staff shortages and skills gaps are major contributing factors to poor performance.5 HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) was slow to introduce major changes to address staffing shortfalls and reduce high workloads, and its efforts have not been sufficient.6,7,8

In 2024, HMPPS found it had significantly underestimated the number of staff required to provide sentence management tasks by approximately 34% (5,400 staff) and was operating with around only half the number of sentence management staff it needed.

HMPPS estimates that it needs to address a capacity gap of around 3,150 staff in 2026-27, even after its recruitment aims. It is therefore relying on further transformation of the Probation Service.

In February 2025, HMPPS established its innovative ‘Our Future Probation Service’ (OFPS) programme to reduce workloads by 25% across the service through improving existing processes and changing the scope of probation supervision. It has adopted a high risk appetite for the programme, with the aim of increasing capacity in response to policy changes that are likely to put further pressures on the service.9

But HMPPS and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) have not fully assessed the potential consequences of OFPS assuming a high level of risk, nor have they set clear thresholds for how much risk the Probation Service can tolerate, which means it may be hard to spot risks that become too high to manage.

The NAO’s report identifies two principal risks to the long-term resilience of the Probation Service: uncertainty over whether HMPPS proposals will free up sufficient capacity to improve performance, and the possible adverse impact of changes on public protection, rehabilitation and wider government objectives such as its ‘safer streets’ mission, if they are not actively managed.

The NAO recommends that MoJ and HMPPS:

• take a robust approach to understanding and managing risks associated with its OFPS programme
• take steps to minimise the impact of change on probation staff
• ensure that sufficient capacity is freed up to improve the quality of probation supervision
• implement robust monitoring and evaluation to assess and react to the impact of changes on the level and depth of probation supervision and support

“A well-functioning Probation Service can ease the financial burden that reoffending imposes on society, which currently costs an estimated £21 billion a year.

“Since the service was brought back under full public control in June 2021, performance has declined, with significant staffing shortfalls and high workloads.

“‘Our Future Probation Service’ is a bold and innovative approach to increase resilience. The government must manage the risks associated with the programme to mitigate the impact on offenders’ chances of successfully rehabilitating in the community.”

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO

--oo00oo--

Conclusions

Research shows that a well-functioning probation service can reduce the significant cost of reoffending to society, estimated by MoJ at £20.9 billion a year across adult offenders, in 2024-25 prices.

However, available data show that, since unification of the Probation Service in June 2021, performance has worsened, with significant staffing shortfalls and high workloads, particularly for the Probation Officer grade.

HMPPS increased its recruitment of probation staff in line with its plans, but in 2024 its internal analysis indicated that it had significantly underestimated the time needed for sentence management tasks. This analysis is undergoing external review but indicates that the service had been operating with around half the staff needed for sentence management.

HMPPS acknowledges that the Probation Service is currently unsustainable, requiring significant corrective action. It has made pragmatic decisions to deal with staffing shortfalls by reducing rehabilitative activity and supervision, but these have not sufficiently reduced PO workloads.

Further, to avoid running out of prison places, MoJ plans to implement legislative changes that will significantly increase demands on the Probation Service.

HMPPS’s ‘Our Future Probation Programme’ is a bold and innovative approach to increase resilience. However, the significant gap between actual and required capacity and slow progress in improving productivity means the challenge it faces is huge.

Furthermore, the pace of change required and nature of the changes HMPPS plans to make pose risks to the probation service’s aims of public protection, rehabilitation, and the government’s wider ‘Safer Streets’ mission, which will need to be actively managed.

HMPPS, MoJ and the government more widely must urgently consider how to manage these risks and how to ensure that reducing the scope of Probation Service activity does not negatively impact on offender outcomes or increase pressure on the wider justice system.

Good Job They Don't Run Breweries

Whilst probation remains tied to HMPPS and MoJ control, there's very little hope that resources will be directed towards community sentencing options when it's realised just how serious the prison crisis is. Of course its also well known that the MoJ are not very good at either project management or the contracting out of services. This from the Independent:-

Revealed: The eye-watering cost of letting prisons crumble

The ageing prison estate is in a dire condition after years of neglect, but the cost of outsourcing basic repairs is spiralling out of control, with shower upgrades in one prison set to cost taxpayers £7.8m, Amy-Clare Martin reports 

Taxpayers are footing the bill for “eyewatering” and grossly inflated repair costs at prisons across the country as the government scrambles to keep overcrowded jails running after decades of neglect, The Independent can reveal. Private contracting costs for basic upgrades are “out of control”, the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) has warned, describing the situation as a “public disgrace” that is failing to deliver value for money.

Meanwhile, prison conditions are worse than ever, with a soaring maintenance backlog approaching £2bn, having doubled from 2020 to 2024. Some prisons are so dire that in 2023, a German court refused to extradite a criminal to Britain due to fears over inhumane conditions. A quarter of prisoners in England and Wales are locked in jails which are not fire safe, while hundreds are held in cells without toilets and forced to defecate in buckets and bags if there aren’t enough staff to let them out to use the toilet overnight.

Labour MP Kim Johnson said: “The taxpayer has been paying twice over: first for underinvestment and bad contracts, then for the premium of reactive maintenance and emergency measures.”

It is feared hundreds of millions have been spent on exorbitant private sector contracts dished out by the Ministry of Justice, whose procurement has been slammed as “reactive and expensive” by the public spending watchdog. An investigation by The Independent has uncovered tens of millions worth of spiralling costs for simple repairs and evidence of a sector in chaos, including:

• A project to upgrade 50 showers at HMP Wandsworth, estimated to cost £13m. The MoJ later said the price came out lower than forecast at £7.8m (£6.5m plus VAT), the equivalent of £156,000 per shower
• A new £12m healthcare centre not in use three years after its scheduled opening date due to fire door issues, unfinished cabling and problems with an air conditioning unit
• £196m worth of upgrades at HMP Liverpool, HMP Birmingham and HMP Guys Marsh left in limbo after the building firm collapsed
• Temporary boilers in use for seven years at HMP Lincoln, which the prisons inspector warned cost more than a permanent replacement

It comes as it emerged the MoJ has a two-year backlog of unpublished spending transparency data - worth an estimated £11billion of public money, according to analysts Tussell. The MoJ insists all spending is accounted for in annual accounts.

Steve Gillan, general secretary of the POA, said: “If the general public knew the charges for basic things to be done... it’s eyewatering, and at the end of the day, they are the taxpayers paying for it. It is not value for money, and it’s an absolute disgrace that taxpayers are footing these bills, which are out of control. No one seems to be very transparent about what’s going on.”

The union, which represents 32,000 prison staff, insists the Conservative government’s decision to privatise all prison maintenance in 2015 was an “utter disaster” as prisons descended into further disrepair. Basic prison maintenance contracts were awarded to two firms, although one collapsed three years later, while larger upgrade and infrastructure projects are put out to tender. More than 4,100 cells have been lost to dilapidation since 2010, despite an overcrowding crisis that means every cell is needed.

Offset against the 6,500 new prison places completed by 2024 – way below the government’s target of 20,000 – this means the net number of available cells has only increased by 1,005 places. The cost per place to protect a cell from being lost to disrepair is between £8,600 and £12,700, the prison service estimates, compared to around £220,000 to build a cell at a new prison. HMP Millsike, a 1,500-cell category C prison in East Yorkshire which opened in March, cost an estimated £400m.

The POA has been lobbying Labour to make good on its manifesto commitment to usher in the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation and bring works back in-house, but fears the government is set to continue the private sector model.

“When you report a problem, it can be anything from six weeks to two months until the very basic stuff is fixed,” Mr Gillan said. “When I used to work on the landing at Chelmsford, you used to phone up the works department, take round a little slip and it would be done the same day.”

Squalid cells

When a local pressure group began to investigate conditions inside overcrowded HMP Wandsworth, which was subject to an urgent notification last year after inspectors found prisoners were spending 22 hours a day in squalid cells, they were met with resistance when they raised questions over the sky-high cost of upgrades. They also questioned why a newly constructed £12m healthcare centre at the south London Victorian prison was not in use three years after its scheduled opening date of October 2021.

The Independent Monitoring Board had also demanded answers over its opening date in its last two annual reports and criticised the project as a “major failure of procurement” because it has no residential beds, despite “totally inadequate” provision at the prison.

In response to a freedom of information request, the prison service revealed the delays were caused by fire door issues, cabling and telecommunications issues, and problems with the air conditioning unit in the pharmacy. It said the centre, which cost £12.48m (£10.4m plus VAT), was finally in use in March this year.

£156,000 for one shower

It also emerged that a proposed £13m project to upgrade a shower block will replace just 50 showers and take almost five years. This later came out lower than forecast at £7.8m (£6.5m plus VAT), the MoJ said, which is the equivalent of £156,000 per shower.

When the Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign pressed for more information, it was told that the prison services “do not have the capacity to respond to your latest set of questions”. The letter, dated April 2025, from Ian Blakeman, a director at His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) London, concluded: “We do not consider that there is benefit to HMP Wandsworth or the prisoners detained there in continuing this correspondence.”

Tom Wheatley, the chair of the Prison Governors’ Association, said privatisation has been “incredibly frustrating” for governors who are no longer able to commission repairs. “When I was first a prison governor, the maintenance staff were employees in my direct management,” he said. “I felt in control of that stuff.”

Abandoned plans

Now, governors are at the mercy of their MoJ landlords, while private contractors charge a premium for the inconvenience of working in a prison environment. Some have got so fed up that they have started their own initiatives, using prisoners to carry out repairs.

When he was running HMP Wakefield from 2018 to 2024, Mr Wheatley was left staggered after learning that replacing a single shower in a supervision unit would cost more than £40,000.

He explained: “Contractors in that environment need to be security cleared to a really high standard. We then place lots of restrictions around when they can come in and out, and how long it takes for them to come in and out. They have to be supervised all the time, and then there’s periods of the day where we don’t let them work. The contractor then thinks, in order to do this bit of work at the prison, instead of this being a job that’s going to take two blokes two days, it’s now going to take two blokes six days. And during those six days, you are going to have to turn down other work. So that’s why it’s so expensive.”

It also has major implications when private firms go bust. The government was forced to step in and launch a corporate-style Government Facilities Services Limited (GFSL) when the firm tasked with maintaining prisons across southern England, Carillion, failed in 2018.

A £56m scheme to upgrade HMP Liverpool has been left an abandoned building site after contractors ISG collapsed last year. The building firm was one of the government’s biggest contractors for upgrades and prison expansion, leaving many projects in limbo.

Work has only recently resumed with replacement builders at HMP Birmingham, where ISG was refurbishing 300 cells at a cost of £61m, The Independent understands. The full cost to the government of the firm’s collapse is not yet known. It will also delay efforts to bring 23,000 occupied cells that do not meet fire safety standards up to code by the end of 2027, leaving them at risk of enforcement action by the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate.

Rats and cockroaches

Prisons inspector Charlie Taylor said he regularly sees prisons with costly temporary fixes that are an “enormous” waste of money, while many are held in squalid conditions inside rat- and cockroach-infested jails. “You often see places with temporary buildings, temporary kitchens,” he told The Independent.

“Very often the prison service is spending more money on hiring kit like generator sets or fridges and things like that than it would by just going out and buying the damn things. That’s just astonishing because it’s an enormous waste of money.”

In a recent inspection of HMP Lincoln, he called for urgent investment to replace the temporary heating system, which was “not fit for purpose”. He said “long delays” with getting a new boiler meant the prison had relied for seven years on a temporary solution that had cost far more than getting a replacement.

However, in its response, the government said the boiler would not be upgraded until pipe replacement works to tackle the risk from Legionella bacteria had been completed, which could take until 2028. In 2017, an inmate died after contracting legionnaires’ disease at the prison.

‘Something has gone badly wrong’

Ms Johnson, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, is backing the POA’s calls to bring back maintenance in-house. She fears privatisation and neglect have left taxpayers footing the bill for hundreds of millions in avoidable costs.

“It is abundantly clear that the system is not delivering value for money,” she told The Independent. “When basic works like Wandsworth’s £13m shower refurbishment are scheduled to take five years, something has gone badly wrong with scoping, procurement and delivery. It is the exact kind of opaque, delay-ridden contracting that breeds mistrust within the system.”

A report from the National Audit Office (NAO) concluded in January that prison funding had failed to keep pace with policy, which has seen more people jailed for longer, leading to “reactive solutions which represent poor value for money”.

This includes a focus on building new places urgently at increased costs and contingency measures, including hiring police cells at nearly five times the average daily cost of a prison place. HMPPS spent £70m on the emergency measure, known as Operation Safeguard, between February 2023 and September 2024, but cells were only occupied roughly 4 per cent of the time, the report said.

An MoJ spokesperson said: 

“This government inherited a prison system in crisis – with crumbling infrastructure, dangerous prisons and hard-working staff under immense pressure. That is why we are focusing efforts on building 14,000 new prison places – with 2,500 already complete – and have announced a £500m investment into long-term prison and probation maintenance so that we always have the cells we need. A 2023 assessment identified that outsourcing prison maintenance contracts to expert private companies would deliver the best value for the taxpayer.”

It's Niche Jim!

As Napo members set off for Eastbourne and the AGM, I thought I'd reflect upon two recent conversations with friends, one a former colleague and another via an entirely different route. The subject of this blog came up with the former saying "I don't read it - I used to, but it's niche" and the other saying "Way too niche!" 

Yes, I get that. I've always felt it's been a useful platform for recusants to gather and lets be honest, they are 'moving on' and not being replaced. I recall a few years ago chatting to an academic who had persuaded some of his students to attend the annual Bill McWilliams lecture in Cambridge. I asked him if he'd ever come across the blog, or if students had? No was the answer and that sort of surprised me because any idle google search of 'probation' will bring the blog up near the top. What does that say about curiosity generally, not to mention 'professional curiosity', or lack of as frequently highlighted in HMI inspection reports?. 

In recent years I've had occasion to chat with several academics delivering probation training at the three contracted universities and it sounded pretty dismal to me. The feeling was that for many students it was viewed as a very cost-effective route to employment other than probation with more than a suspicion that what might be termed serious 'study' not being really required. It was surprising to hear that significant numbers hardly ever attend lectures and are almost unkown to tutors. Essays can often show scant evidence of research, sources are routinely 'surprising' and many therefore achieve dismal marks. When challenged regarding the recording actual probation work, there was a strong suspicion of students being 'creative' in what was actually being undertaken. I can fully understand how a wide-ranging and discursive probation blog wouldn't feature much on the radar.

Interestingly, I notice that the contract for training, value £93million, is currently being tendered:-

"This requirement is for the delivery of the Community Justice graduate diploma as part of the PQiP programme. The PQiP is the mandatory training route for all Probation Officers that are employed by the Probation Service. The Offender Management Act 2007 s10 sets out the Secretary of State for Justice's right to publish guidelines about qualifications, experience or training required to be a Probation Officer, with effect from 1 April 2016 and as set out in statutory guidelines, all Trainee Probation Officers (Learners) must undertake the Professional Qualification in Probation to qualify and perform the work of a Probation Officer. HMPPS are the only employer of Probation Officers, and the PQiP programme is the only route for training Probation Officers in England and Wales. The PQiP programme consists of a BA Hons degree or graduate diploma in Community Justice and a Level 5 vocational qualification in Probation Practice.

The academic components of the PQIP that will be delivered by the Contractor will comprise of a Level 6 academic qualification, with Level 4 and Level 5 academic components used to give advance standing onto the core programme (Level 6). The PQiP learning will be delivered through cohorts of learners on a 6 monthly intake cycle, through 4 entry routes; Probation Services Officer Progression (PSOP), Standard PQiP full-time (post-graduate), Standard PQiP (post-graduate) part-time; and a full-time PQiP non-graduate route. The part-time routes can take between 21-30 months and full-time routes can take between 15-27 months depending on learners' prior learning levels.

The service commencement is estimated to start in March 2027, following the mobilisation phase which will include developing and finalising the curriculum and ensuring the course is appropriately accredited."       

I understand that in addition to the current providers Sheffield Hallam, DeMontfort and Plymouth, several others have expressed interest and there's a rumour applicants might even include the likes of Sodexo!  It's always struck me as somewhat alarming that all the current academic institutions happily agreed to bind their staff from making any public statement deemed critical of HMPPS, MoJ or government policy! So much for academic freedom and no wonder much of the criminal justice system is in such a mess if one chunk of academia with detailed inside knowledge that might be deemed critical is prohibited from speaking up. It also got me thinking about academic papers generally. I've often wondered who they are written for and who indeed will ever read them? 

In running this 'niche' blog for a long time, I've necessarily had reason to sift through many papers and journals and boy are most pretty impenetrable. Those that might be viewed as consise and make a strong case in plainish language are rare in my experience. I would say however that the blog has served to bring much academic endeavour to a wider audience, but sadly there's growing evidence that the job no longer requires it. Maybe it never did, but however it happened, there was at least a shared probation ethos, but I'm not so sure any more. I guess it may have just become irrelevant and a  'niche' concept, but at least I can say we tried to keep the flame alive and the blog continues for as long as recusants want it to.       

Can Consistency live with Creativity?

In yesterday's blog post I sought to highlight how extremely difficult it is for innovation and creativity to co-exist within a command and control structure. Traditionally, these were features that made probation work so rewarding and was routinely encouraged by management. I raised the somewhat anomalous position of independent hostels, now referred to as Approved Premises and my concern for their future. The following paper by Andrew Bridges, former CPO and HMI, cogently sets out the issues I think:-    

What should the ‘independence’ of IAPs look like? 

A personal viewpoint piece by Andrew Bridges, Strategic Director, NAPA (views not necessarily shared by every NAPA Associate) 

1. Why are there independent APs (IAPs) at all? 

There are historical explanations, described elsewhere, of how ‘Approved’ homes for delinquent boys and others, run by charitable bodies, evolved over time through several changes of use into the IAPs of today. But now, in the first three decades of the 21st century, there are ‘business case’ reasons why IAPs have moved from being an anomalous relic from the past into becoming a key component of the Criminal Justice System (CJS) of England & Wales. 

This transition started once all the APs in England & Wales began to be used almost exclusively for men and women being released from prisons, a change of use that had been long overdue. Once this new usage had become established, demand for AP places began to grow. Rightly, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) – established in 2007 – sought to ration the supply of places by restricting eligibility primarily to individuals who were assessed as being of high risk of harm to others, stipulating that the principal purpose of APs was for “public protection”. Nevertheless, the demand for AP places generally has remained high, and projections made by the MoJ still predict further future increases in demand, especially with rising pressures in the prison population overall. 

2. Why does MoJ/HMPPS now want IAPs? 

Because the MoJ is forecasting an increase in demand for AP places, HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) wants to increase the number and range of them that are available at any one time. At first sight, the position looks positive, with HMPPS already directly managing c90 APs itself, besides which the dozen or so independent APs (IAPs) might seem to be making a very modest contribution. But the difficulty is with how to increase the numbers of AP places. Sometimes a few bedspaces can be added to existing premises, and this has been done sometimes, but the need to try to meet potential future demand requires new APs altogether, especially in those geographical areas where there are not enough APs – or any, in some instances.

Opening a new AP is a remarkably difficult task. Not only does there have to be a building that needs to be either purchased or built from scratch, but more importantly it has to gain the right planning permission for it to be used as an AP – and any application to house “ex-prisoners” in a local community almost always leads to a strong adverse public reaction. It is not impossible for HMPPS to establish a new AP directly itself, but in the main it is instead a much more attractive option for HMPPS to invite independent providers to bid to provide an IAP in a specified area of the country. To illustrate this point: During 2021 and 2022, HMPPS managed to open one new directly-managed AP itself (though this was replacing an existing AP), but in contrast was able to gain four new IAPs by commissioning them from independent providers.

So although there are, as ever, financial restraints, HMPPS sees APs generally as a key component in its overall task of managing and supervising individuals who have offended, and sees the IAPs as making a particularly important and valued contribution within that component. 

3. Are there other potential considerations? 

The ‘outsourcing’ of some public services can sometimes be driven by overtly ideological motivations, as was the case with rail privatisation in the 1990s, and the part-privatisation of Probation services in 2014. However, although the commissioning of services by IAPs is consistent with Conservative ideology, there is little in its history or development to suggest that ideology has been the main driver in the case of IAPs – instead it has been the pragmatic ‘business case’ outlined above. Nevertheless, within the ‘business case’ approach, when commissioning any service, the question of ‘competition’ arises, which has two potential elements: competition between potential independent providers, and competition between the independent sector overall and the public sector: 

• Competition between independent providers takes place at the stage of awarding contracts, and in the first two decades or so of the 21st century, MoJ/HMPPS has developed increasing care to ensure that contracts for any of its services are to be awarded following full and fair competition between providers, both current and potentially new providers. This process for awarding contracts is heavily regulated within Government, and in the 2020s decade it is being applied conscientiously. 

• Competition between the independent sector and the public sector, however, is rarely discussed openly at all, and probably with good reason. The lesson from prison privatisation has been that it is next to impossible to make a useful and fair comparison on primarily financial grounds between publicly managed and independently managed prisons because of factors such as the costs of public service pensions, of Crown Immunity (compared with commercial insurance), and the various capital costs, which mean overall that you will never really be ‘comparing like with like’. Although direct ‘competitions’ have been run between public and private prisons the evaluations have necessarily had to be made on a series of qualitative judgements on the information provided. Given that, in such competitions, ‘Government’ is acting as both the commissioner and as one of the competing providers, those competitions have been considered by some to be in principle unsatisfactory too. For this reason, and for the pragmatic reasons outlined further above, the question of direct competition between IAPs and the state-run sector may be unlikely to arise.

4. What does MoJ/HMPPS therefore want from the IAPs? 

Despite the many practical obstacles that make it difficult for Government to compare like with like when evaluating competitive bids, nevertheless the desire to maximise value for money for the public during times of continued financial restraint will still apply. But, for the reasons given above, a desire to drive down cost does not seem to be the main motivation for HMPPS to develop the IAP sector. The ‘business case’ for consolidating, and ideally expanding, the provision of IAPs would appear to be a pragmatic one: There is a growing demand for places, and the independent sector seems to offer a much more promising route to meeting that growth in need. 

This then leads to the key question of this paper: If the provision of AP places for individuals being released from prisons in England & Wales is to be met by a mixture of state-run and independent institutions, how far should those institutions be exactly the same as each other, or can there be differences? (and if so, what?) NB A similar issue arose with ‘public’ and ‘private’ prisons. 

As ever with a national service of any kind, there is a strong drive within HMPPS for consistency, and the reasons for this are understandable. When differences can be found between provision of any public service in different geographical parts of the country, a cry of ‘postcode lottery’ is easily raised by critics, and legal actions based on such arguments have been successful in the past. But how far should that drive for consistency go? 

One lesson that has perhaps been learned from the prison privatisation experience is that certain elements of national ‘infrastructure’ must apply to both sectors, notably the facility to allocate and manage individual cases. Standards of physical security etc need to be consistent nationally too. 

But when we focus specifically on managing residents within each local IAP there is some scope for variety that is both feasible and desirable - a mix of national consistency and local creativity. However, the problem is that although MoJ knows it wants, from its providers, some of that enterprising creativity within a high degree of national consistency, it doesn’t have a framework (or rationale, or ‘strategy’) for defining how that mix of consistency and creativity should be made up. 

Without this framework, MoJ/HMPPS goes into its ‘default mode’ of driving for consistency; it has a tendency to slide into setting increasingly detailed prescriptions about how the work should be done. The unfortunate effect of this is to ‘squeeze out’ much of the creativity that MoJ actually wants to see from IAPs. 

In short, MoJ knows that it wants a mix of consistency and creative initiative from its providers (it talks helpfully of “Social Value”), but – I argue – it does not know how to define that mix. 

5. Therefore, how should the mix between consistency and creativity be defined? 

As already indicated, this question probably needs answering under two separate sub-headings, National infrastructure, and Local delivery:

 i) National infrastructure: 

It might sound unnecessary to say it, but there does need to be a high level of consistency in the way that the IAPs function as part of the ‘national system’: standards of building security, drug testing arrangements, being part of whatever case allocation systems that HMPPS establishes, and operating the same national case management, and email/comms systems. The reason that it perhaps needs saying is that with early private prisons they were allowed to establish their own case management IT systems, which led to difficulties with maintaining case management when individual prisoners were moved between prisons and were then release on licence. This arrangement had to change. 

In the AP world, it is already the case that HMPPS acts almost as direct management when it comes to such matters of ‘national infrastructure’, including direct arrangements for providing upgraded security equipment in IAPs. To a very large extent, under this heading there is very little scope for ‘local creativity’, and therefore for good reasons ‘consistency’ is the dominant consideration.

 ii) Local delivery – work with individual IAP residents:

Here, the picture should be quite different. In principle, the answer to the question is not complicated, even though the detailed implementation requires some additional thinking-through: The principle is: 

Prescribe WHAT is to be achieved, but only Advise HOW it should be achieved: 

• The commissioner should specify, wisely, the operational outcomes – the measures of what success looks like – and Prescribe that this is WHAT it requires from its independent providers – 
• But although it might offer Advice, it should avoid prescribing HOW those outcomes should be achieved, because working with individual residents is – of course! – an individualised service. 
• For example: You commission the taxi, the destination and the agreed price, but you don’t then ‘backseat drive’ the driver through every step in the journey. 

The difficulty is in the application of this principle within the ‘messy reality’ of the AP world - indeed in Probation work generally – especially while MoJ/HMPPS continues to make a poor job of defining and managing the outcomes it wants for Probation. However, I have previously demonstrated, both in principle and in my own past practice, how the core outcomes of mainstream Probation work, the Three Purposes of Probation, can be defined, managed, implemented and even inspected. 

The Three Purposes are: Reducing Likelihood of Reoffending, Implementing the Sentence, and Containing Risk of Harm to others. I have also set out how these should be measured as outcomes (and have done so in practice myself in the past). It is difficult to operate this, but it can be done, though it requires a determined focus.

There is then the further additional challenge of trying to focus on just one, relatively ‘short’, stage in the rehabilitation journey that is being undertaken by each person on Probation, such as a period of residence in an AP. (Individuals deemed to be of High Risk of Harm to others will normally stay at an AP for no more than 12 weeks on their release from prison.) In principle there is the need to set ‘interim’ outcomes for this stage of the rehabilitation journey – i.e. achievements by the individual that will mark progress towards, or ‘stepping stones’ towards, future desistance and the other longer-term outcomes. It is these that provide the basis for the ‘WHAT’ that the commissioner needs to specify for AP work. APs make their contribution to the longer-term outcomes by enabling residents to achieve such ‘stepping stones’ of progress on their individual desistence journeys, and APs – particularly IAPs – need to be able to demonstrate that they are delivering that contribution. So, it is argued here, IAPs should be accountable for demonstrating that they are making that contribution, but there should be the scope to be creative in how they make that contribution. 

Accordingly, when MoJ/HMPPS asserts that it wants a mix of consistency and creativity from its IAPs, it is logical to argue that the consistency should be with WHAT it wants to see achieved during the period of residency, and the creativity is about the HOW it is to be achieved.

6. For example ….. 

Quality of practice: Rightly, both managers and practitioners like to talk about this. It can be defined as a key ‘Enabler’ in the process – that enables the individual to progress on his or her desistance journey. Assessment and preparation before arrival, induction and assessment after arrival, and continuing interaction during residency, all require good quality practice by IAP staff. 

Unfortunately, there has for many years now been a tendency to try to promote such Quality by issuing ever more detailed stipulations, guidances, checklists, forms and formats – all with the best of intentions – often designed by skilled current or former practitioners; but this is a mistake. These wellintended initiatives are based on the fallacy of ‘comprehensiveness’ as they endeavour to cover every eventuality. Yet a single format, such as OASys (Offender Assessment System), cannot cope with every eventuality anyway, and meanwhile it runs the great risk of becoming ‘a long form that you just have to fill in’ rather than an opportunity for the practitioner to engage with and think about the unique features of the individual they are working with. This ‘comprehensive stipulation’ approach is a classic example of Prescribing the HOW, which, as well as being time-consuming, also stifles creativity.

 Alternatively, when defining Quality of practice, it is instead possible to Prescribe the WHAT. You define what you want the individual to have experienced as a result of the interaction – i.e: the resident will have been assessed well before arriving, is inducted well on arrival, and is managed well during their stay. Doing each of these things “well” can be made more specific, e.g. For Induction, “The resident will have experienced a humane and respectful face-to-face interaction in which she/he has been made aware of her/his rights, responsibilities, constraints and opportunities while at the AP.” 

By Prescribing the WHAT instead of the HOW, skilled practitioners will undertake and write their assessments, plans and reviews in way that is focused, succinct and appropriate to the needs of the case, rather than as a series of ‘answers’ on a long form that was designed to meet some external ideal of comprehensiveness.

Staffing: In terms of staffing of any individual AP, this is also a matter for local delivery – not national infrastructure – so again it should be Prescribed in terms of WHAT is to be achieved – that residents will be in an environment which is safe, and where they are treated with respect, and are being expected to work to progress their own rehabilitation journey etc. It is not necessary or desirable to prescribe HOW the staff profile or establishment should be made up.

7. Why is this all very difficult? 

‘Drawing the line’ between the WHAT and the HOW is difficult at the best of times. It is especially difficult for the commissioning authority – MoJ/HMPPS – to do this while it remains insufficiently clear about the overall outcomes it wants from Probation work overall. While that overall strategy remains unclear at the macro level, it is not surprising when at the micro level its managers and commissioners find themselves composing increasingly detailed procedure manuals, guidance documents and forms in their efforts to stipulate how Probation work should be carried out.

It is not the purpose of this paper to set out the full case for how Probation work overall could and should be much better managed – that has been done elsewhere. But in a nutshell, a clear focus on the core Three Purposes of Probation would make it clear to Parliament and to the public what Probation work is aiming to achieve, and at the same time would provide a framework within which the various elements of the ‘Probation world’ should make their contributions towards the achievement of those Three Purposes. In the case of APs – both state-run and independent – although they generally keep a resident for no more than 12 weeks, they can still be expected to make their contribution towards that person becoming less likely to reoffend, complying with their sentence, and having their Risk of Harm to others contained and managed. When successful, a period of AP residency serves as a ‘stepping stone’ on an individual’s desistance journey. 

These ‘contributions’, or ‘stepping stones’, are difficult to define at the best of times, but when the overall strategy is insufficiently clear, then micromanagement, overprescription and setting plausiblesounding detailed objectives will seem to some to offer an attractive way of filling the vacuum, even though these can all easily stifle the individual creativity that is also wanted. That lack of strategic clarity by MoJ/HMPPS is why defining the boundary between the WHAT and the HOW, which is difficult to do anyway, has become especially difficult at the operational level. Instead, a strong focus on the Three Purposes could provide the clarity needed to enable Probation work generally to be managed with the ‘right mix’ of consistency and individual creativity.

8. Summing up: 

A commissioned service, such as an independent AP, should certainly expect to work within a centrally managed national infrastructure as it aims to achieve the outcomes that have been specified (“Prescribed”) by the commissioning authority – it should not expect to be able to decide, ‘independently’, to aim for different outcomes. However, what an IAP should be able to do – independently – is exercise its creativity in how it goes about achieving the Prescribed outcomes. Accordingly, the commissioning authority should Prescribe WHAT outcomes are to be achieved, but should do no more than Advise HOW those outcomes should be achieved. 

It is understandable that MoJ/HMPPS, the commissioning authority, finds it difficult to carry out this approach in practice because it does not yet focus clearly enough on the core Three Purposes of Probation supervision. Once that focus is reached, it will become a little easier to specify the interim outcomes – the “stepping stones” – that IAPs need to be aiming for in order to demonstrate that they are making their contribution towards making more likely the achievement of the Three Purposes. 

Andrew Bridges 

Strategic Director, National Approved Premises Association CIC 

December 2023

Is There Hope?

To be perfectly honest, I'm having trouble finding much in the way of hope right now for the future of our once gold standard and respected probation service. It's pretty clear it cannot survive as an agency for good under HMPPS and civil service control. In Clash of Cultures  I've already sought to highlight how the dead hand of government control have already conspired to throttle innovative and successful charity initiatives such as Circles of Support and Accountability and the Safer Living Foundation by witholding funding.

I worry about the future for the charity-owned and managed independent Approved Premises sector, reliant as they are upon HMPPS contracts and funding. Interestingly, I've recently become aware of one way to avoid HMPPS and MoJ completely and that is to find a wealthy and well-connected benefactor, such as Lady Edwina Grosvenor. Wikipedia confirms "She is a founder and a trustee of the charity The Clink, and founder of the charity One Small Thing. She is the sister of Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster."

When you only have a few minutes with a person you can still make a difference.

One Small Thing’s vision is a justice system that can recognise, understand, and respond to trauma. Our mission is to redesign the justice system for women and their children, which has led us to open our residential community Hope Street. We also facilitate trauma-informed and gender-responsive programmes for the justice and community sectors.

Our name reflects the value of small acts – empathy, compassion, respect – and their combined power to make a big difference to the individual - and to society as a whole.

Hope Street: Frequently Asked Questions About One Small Thing 

1.What is One Small Thing and what is it trying to achieve? Hope Street is being developed by the charity One Small Thing. One Small Thing’s vision is a justice system that can recognise, understand, and respond to trauma. Our mission is to redesign the justice system for women and their children. We have three work strands: 

Redesign the way the justice system responds to women and their children in a way that can be replicated and scaled nationally. 

Educate prison residents to understand how trauma can affect them and equip them with the skills to respond; and train frontline staff to understand and respond effectively to trauma and adversity. 

Influence politicians and policy makers to encourage culture change across the justice system and the people who work within it. 

2.Who is involved? One Small Thing is a charity led by CEO Claire Hubberstey. The charity was founded by Edwina Grosvenor who is the Chair of Trustees. One Small Thing involves a number of leading advisers and experts in the area including Dr Stephanie Covington.

3.When was it set up? One Small Thing has been leading trauma informed work in the UK for eight years, and became an independent charity in 2018 (registered Charity Number 1180782). One Small Thing is a registered company limited by guarantee (Company No. 11516337). 

4.How is it funded? One Small Thing is supported by several generous funders, donors and philanthropists, and through its training offer. 

5.What is One Small Thing’s relationship with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and organisations like the Prison Service, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Police and other stakeholders involved in the justice system? One Small Thing is a separate and independent charity committed to working with Government and partners across the sector to make a positive difference. We work with the MoJ to support and improve the justice system and make it more effective. Through our policy and influencing work, we respond to and challenge national policy and systems where relevant. Improving the justice system requires input from a wide range of stakeholders. We work with stakeholders at all levels in pursuit of our mission to redesign the justice system for women and their children. We take a collaborative approach and recognise the benefits of multi-agency involvement.

6.What is Hope Street? One Small Thing has built Hope Street, a residential community for women and their children in Hampshire. Hope Street pilots a new approach to working with women involved in the justice system. From within a healing, trauma-informed, residential environment, women and their children have access to a range of specialist support including mental health, domestic abuse and substance use services. At Hope Street women have access to: 

• A safe, 24 hour staffed residential Hub, purpose built and specifically designed to create a trauma informed and trauma responsive environment for women and their children 
• Individually tailored programmes designed to enable women to address a wide range of issues in their lives that have resulted in them becoming involved with the justice system 
• Eleven move-on supported Hope Houses for women leaving the Hub in preparation for return to their own home 
• Ongoing outreach community-based support for women and their families once they have returned to their own home.

Hope Street is also for the local community to access a community café space and group activities. As well as the improved wellbeing of women and children, and benefits to the community, by working with women to rebuild their lives, we will also see a reduction in crime and reoffending. 

7.Why is it needed? Research has shown that 72% of women entering prison in England and Wales to serve a sentence have committed a non-violent offence They have invariably been victims of life-long neglect, abuse and disadvantage with a third having been in care as children. 60% of women receiving short prison sentences are mothers: their children then end up in care and they lose their homes.

After a short sentence, of only a few weeks, they are left with no family and no home and in a much worse situation, compounded by the trauma of prison and with little support to assist them in rebuilding their lives. A gender-specific and community-based alternative is needed if we are to create a more effective, successful and supportive pathway for women. The core and root issues addressed with a trauma informed approach ultimately means better outcomes for women and their children. Hope Street is backed by the evidence and is in line with Government policy: In June 2018, the Government’s Female Offender Strategy identified four strategic priorities: 

• fewer women entering the justice system; 
• fewer women in custody, especially on short-term sentences; 
• more women managed in the community successfully; 
• better conditions for women in custody. 

In June 2019 the Farmer Review for Women was published, and throughout the report there is huge emphasis on the urgent need to deliver a viable alternative to custody for most women who commit non-violent crimes but who invariably end up in our prison system. 

8.How is what you are providing different to the Governments planned Residential Women’s Centres (RWCs)? Plans for the Government’s Residential Women’s Centre released so far suggests it will be run by Probation and accommodate all women who would have been sentenced for 12 months or less. The provision will be short stay accommodation with a 12-week course. Hope Street is different because:

• The Government’s residential women’s centre is proposed to house women who would have gone on to receive a short custodial sentence. This misses a large group of women. Women will be able to stay at Hope Street instead of being unnecessarily sent to custody on remand prior to sentencing, if they are eligible for release from prison but this is not possible due to lack of accommodation, or so they can complete community service with somewhere safe and supportive to stay. We know 20% of women in prison are on remand3 and in July 2021 77% of women leaving the largest women’s prison in England and Wales faced homelessness.
• Hope Street will include a network of housing, Hope Houses, across Hampshire, allowing us to support many more women and over the long term rather than for just a 12 week period. 
• Services will be run by One Small Thing as an independent charity. This means that our priority can be the women we support rather than meeting any external targets. Women from minoritised groups who may have distrust of Government services, can be reassured that we are independent. By taking a positive, compassionate and trauma-informed approach, the aim is to achieve better outcomes for women, their children and society. 

9.Who is it for? Hope Street aims to be a community-based alternative to women receiving short custodial sentences, being unnecessarily imprisoned on remand or released to homelessness. Most women being sent to prison are without question some of the most disadvantaged in our society, have not committed violent offences and are not a risk to society: 

• Most women entering prison to serve a sentence (72%) have committed a nonviolent offence. 
• More women are sent to prison to serve a sentence for theft than for violence against the person, robbery, sexual offences, fraud, drugs, and motoring offences combined. 
•  51% of women were sentenced to six months and 64% of women were sentenced to 12 months or less April to June 2021.  
• More than 17,500 children were estimated to be separated from their mother by imprisonment in 2020. 
• Nearly 60% of women in prison and under community supervision in England and Wales are victims of domestic abuse. This is likely to be an underestimate because many women fear disclosing abuse.  
• Nearly half of women reported needing help with a drug problem on entry to prison—compared with nearly three in 10 men.
• Women are much more likely than men to self-harm whilst in prison. In 2020, women made up 22% of all self-harm incidents despite making up only 4% of the prison population.

10.Why Southampton? Of the 877 women arrested in Hampshire between 1 st November 2018 and 31st October 2019, 33% were from Southampton. Women from Southampton who receive a custodial sentence are sent out of area, often more than 60 miles away from their home, making it very difficult for their children and families to visit them. It therefore makes sense to prioritise Southampton as the preferred location for the Hope Street Hub because it has the greatest need. This is a significant region and it is not well-served at present, so there is an opportunity to make a positive difference. 

11.Who runs it? Hope Street is run by a team that will include a range of multi-disciplinary practitioners, colocated staff from a range of other agencies and partner organisations. The Hope Street team work closely with the council and health services as well as other voluntary sector agencies to ensure effective multi-agency working. We work in partnership with other local specialist services, to draw on their skills and expertise and to avoid duplication. We have extensively discussed our plans with both the statutory and voluntary services in the area. We deliver 1:1 support and group activities to women on Probation as part of the Hampshire Probation contract in partnership with the charity Advance and have built up strong local working partnerships through this work.

12.How do you provide for women with children? Hope Street provides family accommodation for women with their children wherever it is deemed appropriate following assessment to do so. We have flats that can accommodate women with their children at the Hub and provide play and support services for children on site. 

We know that maternal separation is traumatic for children and causes stress and trauma, which in many cases has a life-long impact. By removing the trauma of separation, the mental health and well-being of children are not put at risk. Keeping families together where it is in children’s best interests, is enshrined in UK law and is something we are proud to champion.

The offer of a safe residential option where children can continue to live with their mothers and be supported as a family will enable the courts to make better sentencing decisions and contribute to the aim of breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma and vulnerability. 

We assess, with social services and other agencies, whether a woman who is eligible for Hope Street has dependent children who should accompany her. Subject to assessment and capacity, we will accommodate whatever number of children we need to, subject to having space, and will provide onsite childcare facilities to look after them while she is undertaking her treatment or training programmes. 

13.How many women will Hope Street support? The Hope Street Hub can accommodate up to 24 women – plus children - at any one time in shared flats. When including the network of Hope Houses, our ambition is that Hope Street Hampshire will accommodate 124 women and their children, with another 500 women accessing services on a day basis. 

14.How much will it cost? Constructing the centre has cost approximately £7.5m with around £3m per year needed to cover the operating costs across the Hope Street Hub and housing pathway. The costs were modelled on other public services and come in significantly less, for instance than a residential facility in the NHS. We estimate one year’s support to cost a quarter of what it costs to send a women to prison for 12 months. Hope Street aims to significantly reduce the overall cost to the public purse by addressing the root causes of the issues the women face, equipping them with skills and giving them an opportunity to build a new life and take a productive role in society.

15.Who is funding Hope Street? Hope Street is being made possible thanks to the generous support of our funders, major donors and philanthropists. We are in the process of securing the capital cost for the site and build plus 5 years running costs.

16.What taxpayer money is involved in building Hope Street if any? No taxpayer money is involved in the capital cost of the Hope Street Hub being established in Southampton. 

17.Where is the Hope Street Hub site? We have a site in Southampton situated in a community of other service providers and which is close to public transport.

18.What consultation have you undertaken? We have consulted with those with lived experience, members of the local and county council and local stakeholders in order to help us shape the Hope Street Hub so it can be a truly valuable community resource serving the needs of women and children affected by and at risk of trauma. The development of Hope Street has evolved over a number of years and has involved a range of experts, service providers and women with lived experience. 

19.What about neighbours directly affected? Our aim for Hope Street is that it is an asset to the local community and involve neighbours in accessing its facilities. The planning application process involved consultation with all directly affected and an invitation to submit views as part of the consultation process. We constructed the Hope Street Hub as considerately as possible and keep interested parties up to date on developments. 

20.What does the Hub look like? Who has designed it? The development of Hope Street has involved long term planning involving scoping out of the project, design principles and work on site specific design. After a thorough tendering process involving a range of local architects we appointed SNUG to work with us and in collaboration with Focus Design and Harris Bugg Studio to deliver an integrated healing environment. All have track records of collaborative and sensitive approaches. The Hope Street Hub is filled with natural light and greenery to create a calming and inspiring environment that allows for private reflection, healing and recovery as well as shared experiences. 

21.What is special or bespoke about the design? The Hope Street Hub is the first of its kind in the UK being specifically designed with women to meet the needs of women and to be trauma informed in both design and build. The design of the building is sympathetic to its locality and embodies the values of One Small Thing by promoting an environment through its design principles that enables compassion, understanding, respect, equality and justice. As a community asset, the Hope Street Hub hosts a community café and group activities such as keep fit classes

Hope Street was created along gender-specific and trauma-informed principles. This aims to recognise that the women who will be resident have experienced severe trauma, often since early childhood, and that this trauma needs to be addressed if the individual is to be able to achieve profound and long-term change to their lives. 

22. Is the Hub open? The Build is now complete and Hope Street's Official Opening by HRH The Princess of Wales took place at the end of June 2023.

Napo AGM 2025

It's nearly time for the Napo AGM starting on Thursday afternoon and it's interesting to see what are the most important issues for members as recorded by the ballot results. Coming in at the top scoring 80 is:- 

Get us out of HMPPS

"This AGM notes the Probation Service is being used to mop up the overcrowding situation in our prisons without regard to our own role and probation ethos. Our management has been subsumed by prison staff and prison culture, diluting our professional integrity.

This AGM believes the Probation Service needs to retain its identity and professional standards by being truly independent from HMPPS. This AGM calls on Napo to campaign to remove us from HMPPS control and the wider Civil Service."

Next up with 68 votes is:- 

Labour must urgently deliver on its promise to review Probation Governance 

"Probation is in crisis and has been so for so long now that crisis seems routine. The HMPPS model of a combined prison and probation service is defunct, never having been fit for purpose. To coin a phrase, it is irredeemably flawed. In its manifesto for election, the now Labour Government promised a review of the governance of Probation. Our frustration that this has not been announced alongside the sentencing review cannot be overstated. 

The repeated MoJ excuse for inaction, that probation staff are weary of change, is hollow. Since TR, all changes to probation have been against the expressed wishes and good judgment of experts and practitioners. 

The repeated assertion that staff recruitment and retention will fill the void, is belied by the failure of attempts to secure this. Asking rats to board or remain on a sinking ship is a folly.

The promised review of the governance of Probation is urgently needed. Napo will communicate the urgent need for a review of Probation governance, as promised in the Labour manifesto, to the Minister, and campaign vigorously for it, keeping members and activists informed as to progress."

Then scoring 65 is:-

You can’t punish someone back to health

"There is a wealth of data, research and inspection reporting to demonstrate that Probation is a sick and traumatised organisation, and the toll that this is taking on our members is both unacceptable and unsustainable. 

The sickness absence data reflects this. Individuals are having their health and happiness wrecked. Wellbeing initiatives are laudable and beneficial but should complement, not replace, good Health and Safety practice. 

H&S is often derided, but with a workforce that is neither healthy nor safe, it’s time for the employer to desist from blaming the individual for their lack of resilience/yoga/mindfulness and get real with workloads, staff support and rewards. 

Napo has already won agreement from our employer that absence management policy should be pursued with more humanity and kindness. What is not clear to our members is whether this is percolating down through the organisation. Kind words at the top mean nothing if individuals are still subject to cruel and inflexible sickness management. Managers must be supported in exercising discretion in applying absence policies. 

Napo will demand from HMPPS a regular review of sickness absence management data and other evidence to firmly establish that management discretion in absence management processes is being encouraged and used."

Then scoring 61:-

Toolkits no longer fit for purpose

"With the advent of the ‘one size fits all programme’ and delivery reduced to High and Very High Risk clients, Community Offender Managers are left delivering toolkits on a 1-2-1 basis with increasing numbers of clients. 

Many of the toolkits, such as Maps for Change, are complex and difficult pieces of work that require a lot of time to prepare and deliver and training to deliver these toolkits effectively is inadequate. 

We call on Napo to demand that the employer consults on developing new toolkits and 1-2-1 work that are dynamic and easier to access. We also need better training to be able to deliver these interventions to a high and consistent standard to enable clients to engage with an effective change process."

Then scoring 59:-

Workload Stress should be recorded in RIDDOR

"This AGM notes with concern that workload stress, which can affect staff for more than three days sickness, is not recordable for Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR), which undermines the seriousness of the condition of workload stress and wellbeing. This AGM agrees to raise this issue within the wider TUC movement, which will lead to a campaign to get workload stress with more than three days sickness absence recordable in RIDDOR."

Then scoring 53:-

OMiC Not Fit for Purpose!! 

"This AGM believes the OMiC (Offender Management in Custody) Model is not fit for purpose. Prisoners are commonly being released into the community without resettlement plans due to staff shortages in prison and in sentence management in the community. Probation staff in prisons are also feeling isolated and disenfranchised since their direct line management moved across to the Prison Governors, who may direct to prioritise prison targets, overriding the focus on resettlement planning. 

This AGM notes the introduction of short sentence legislation, such as SDS40 and HDC365, as well as the forthcoming Sentencing Review, namely FTR48, has only increased the pressure due to last minute notification of immediate releases on already limited probation resources, which is unsustainable. 

This AGM urges Napo to work immediately towards the cancellation of OMiC and return Prison Probation management to the Probation Service, helping us to regain our independence and get our voices back."

--oo00oo--

Those familiar with AGM preceedure will be aware that the running order will be slightly different as committee and network motions take precedence and compositing of motions is taken into account. I think we can take some satisfaction from the fact that all the above has been extensively discussed on here at various times, demonstrating the continuing relevance and value of the platform for topical debate and discussion. 

As I have previously mentioned, I'm no longer a member and cannot attend, but hopefully some readers may feel able to share on here thoughts and reflections, particularly in relation to keynote speakers including Liz Saville-Roberts MP, HMI Martin Jones and Chief Probation Officer Kim Thornden-Edwards. I will be in Eastbourne on Thursday at the Cornfield Garage Wetherspoons, certainly from 7pm and hope to meet a few colleagues old and new for a bevvy or two. Cheers.