Not Fit For Purpose

With a call for probation to be put into 'special measures', I'm reminded of this that ultimately resulted in the MoJ being created and probation moving from Home Office supervision:-

"Our system is not fit for purpose."

And with this description of parts of the Home Office in 2006, the then-Home Secretary John Reid minted a phrase that has lodged in the lexicon of British politics. He was speaking a few months after thousands of foreign-born prisoners had been released from British jails without first being considered for deportation.

Lord Reid has previously attributed the four-word phrase to an unnamed senior civil servant. Now in a three-part series about the Home Office, the Newscast podcast can reveal the identity of its author. It was the permanent secretary in the department at the time, Sir David Normington.

"It is my phrase, but it was written in a private memo to the Home Secretary, John Reid, just after he had arrived. [It was] me saying, 'This is what the Home Office is like,'" he told us.

Sir David accompanied Lord Reid as he uttered the now infamous form of words to a House of Commons committee two decades ago.

"With me sat beside him, [I tried] to rearrange my face as he described all 70,000 civil servants in the Home Office as not fit for purpose," he recalled. "That was a difficult moment and the civil service said to me: 'Well, why don't you stand up and tell him it's not true?'

"The trouble was… it was my phrase."

In the 20 years since it was popularised, "not fit for purpose" has become a universal by-word for state incompetence, something bureaucrats and their ministerial bosses reach for when they are trying to strike a tough, no-nonsense tone.

The Hansard record of parliamentary proceedings suggests it has been used nearly 3,000 times in the Commons and Lords since 2006. In the 20 years before that, the phrase was used just 37 times. It has been deployed in debates ranging from conditions in armed forces housing to the sewerage system of a Cornish hospital.

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Now at this point, can I point readers in the direction of Dominic Cummings' evidence to the House of Lords Consitution Committee a couple of days ago. For those interested in probation's nightmare journey at the hands of government and civil service, I think you will find your time will be well spent as you reflect on his robust demolition of the shit show that purports to be our system of government and political control. Reflect also on the role the Cabinet Secretary plays and our past dealings with the current post holder.

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In the absense of being in the room and limited news emerging, I guess this in the Guardian from Polly Toynbee gives a flavour of feeling within Napo at the AGM in Newcastle:- 

Britain is addicted to prisons. Our crumbling probation service proves they don’t work

The current system is unable to quench the public thirst for locking people up – and certainly doesn’t ensure proper care once they are released

Public services need more investment across the board. Every day, another wretched story. Look at the Institute for Government’s (IFG) Public Services Performance Tracker for a plain assessment of A&E corridor care, councils struggling to meet the demands of social care and the Send system, the courts backlog, GP caseloads or families lost in temporary accommodation. A chancellor approaching a budget is besieged by need. It’s easy for us journalists to pick out shock stories and claim each one is an absolute priority, but how should a chancellor choose?

Today it’s the probation officers, whose conference in Newcastle is launching a ballot for industrial action. Their caseloads overflowed long ago, but now thousands of prisoners released early – 2,000 this month – have been thrust upon them. The responsibility is overwhelming, with officers blamed for crimes their clients commit.

The probation story is told in scores of reports: the National Audit Office found the service running on half the staff needed to cover released prisoners. It also reported failures in electronic tagging, echoed by the IFG reporting only 55% of tags were fitted in time. Napo, the probation officers’ union, blames the problems on awarding contracts to the lowest bidders at prices that mean the job isn’t done properly.

The number of offenders charged with serious further offences while on probation has increased, with the public accounts committee blaming staff shortages. Vacancies leave probation services 25%-30% below target levels. The government is training another 1,300, but that’s not enough, says Napo, considering the high dropout rate once recruits discover the abuse, threats and stress of the work, alongside the fact that the most common cause of staff sickness is mental ill health.

The sheer impossibility of their caseloads caused the government to abandon any attempt to say what their caseload should be, so the “workload measurement tool” was abruptly ditched in September just before the October raft of new prisoner releases. There is no point in stating an official workload standard that can’t be met.

Eleven hostels and seven halfway houses, places that help probation officers supervise released prisoners, have just closed for repairs and because of a lack of staff. Drug addiction and mental health problems untreated in prisons, coupled with cuts to education, training and rehabilitation, make prisoners even less prepared for release.

The probation system was broken by a disastrous privatisation when Chris Grayling (who banned the sending of books to prisoners) split it apart into 21 private companies, with the workforce organisationally divided in two. Private companies only handled offenders judged low to medium risk, while the most serious offenders remained under the control of the state. Companies under-invested, experienced staff left, and none of the innovation promised was delivered. After this ideological privatisation was abandoned in 2021, the probation service never recovered.

The lord chancellor is set to address the probation officer’s conference. “But please,” says Napo chair Ben Cockburn, “no bullshit. Don’t tell us how well we do an exceptionally difficult job. We know that.”. Napo rejected a 5% pay offer on the grounds it falls far behind equivalent offers to workers in local government, police and social work. Under planned industrial action, Cockburn says probation officers will work to contract and refuse unpaid overtime. That, he says, will cause collapse.

What probation officers need immediately is reduced workloads, pruned to the riskiest cases, leaving less serious cases unallocated. “Put the service into special measures,” Cockburn says. He also wants the courts to stop piling on more cases until there are enough staff to cope. “We are firefighting from one emergency to another,” he says – or called away to someone in a police cell, or to a paedophile found dating a woman with a child, or a domestic violence case.

Cutting workloads for probation officers is only a short-term solution, one that avoids the real question. Why is there an ever-rising prison population, despite the sustained, multi-decade fall in crime rates?

“We are addicted to prison,” Cockburn says. In his view, probation works when officers have time for long-term working relationships with offenders. “It’s the best job in the world,” he says, recalling the journey of one prisoner who had committed a terrible crime as a young man. “I saw him in prison, knew him for 15 years, with time for therapeutic work.” But, these days, that’s so rare. “Someone now might see eight different officers, retelling their story over and over, creating no trust.”

Why build more prison cells? An inspection of a brand new private prison, HMP Millsike in East Yorkshire, found it unsafe due to a lack of experienced staff, as well as chronic staff shortages. Even at its opening, it was “chaotic”, lacking basic processes for important things like locking doors and counting prisoners. Hundreds of cells are still empty because of a lack of officers.

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So, what would 'special measures' mean? According to AI:-

If you are following current justice system reforms, calls to put probation into special measures are almost always referring to the institutional turnaround framework to prevent the service from collapsing under the weight of the prison capacity crisis.

Putting the Probation Service into special measures means placing it under a strict, time-limited intervention framework triggered by severe organizational underperformance, safety failures, or critical staff shortages.

When a public sector institution in the UK criminal justice system (such as a prison or a regional probation delivery unit) enters special measures, it signals that standard operations have failed and external authority must step in to stabilize the service.

Organizational Turnaround (The Institutional Meaning): As described above, it is an enforcement framework used by the government when an agency is failing its basic duty to protect the public.

Key Operational Changes

• Loss of Operational Autonomy: Senior leadership faces intense external scrutiny. A specialized oversight board or external management team usually steps in to run or strictly monitor operations.
• Emergency Workload Restructuring: Frontline staff and unions often call for special measures to force the government to legally reduce extreme caseloads. This allows practitioners to focus only on high-risk offenders, leaving lower-risk cases unallocated or managed via automated tracking.
• Emergency Funding and Resources: The Ministry of Justice may inject emergency capital, bypass hiring bottlenecks, or deploy "detached duty" staff from other regions to fill severe vacancy gaps.
• Mandatory Action Plans: The service is legally compelled to publish and execute a strict turnaround plan, typically within a window of a few weeks, addressing specific failures like public protection shortfalls or vetting delays.
• HM Inspectorate of Probation will conduct frequent, unannounced follow-up reviews to ensure compliance, rather than waiting for standard inspection cycles.

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We've already had one response:-

I’m not convinced that calling for probation to be put into special measures is the right strategy. It focuses on framing probation as a failing service that needs hope, help and government intervention and restructuring, rather than exposing the consequences of years of underinvestment, excessive workloads, poor pay and difficulties retaining and recruiting experienced staff.

The priority should be a sustained campaign for better pay and conditions, manageable workloads and the resources needed to deliver an effective service. These are the measures that would help retain experienced staff, attract new recruits and improve outcomes.

Calling for special measures risks handing the government the justification to restructure the service on its own terms, potentially with union consent, as happened in the past, rather than forcing it to address the issues that have brought probation to this point.

Let’s not allow union failure to hand over defeat. Probation needs investment, not a declaration of surrender. The unions should be using their collective strength to demand the conditions necessary for the service to succeed, not inadvertently strengthening the case for further government intervention.

Reading Anonymous, 15 October 2026, 23:04 — satire or not — while the AGM sabre-waves and applauds, this is the reality. The question is whether union leadership is prepared to fight for the future of probation and the people who deliver it, or whether it is helping to pave the way for another government-led restructuring.