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.