The deadline has been extended to Monday 2 March at 11.55pm in:
East of England
Kent, Surrey and Sussex
London
South Central
The deadline has been extended to Monday 23 February at 11.55pm in:
East Midlands
Greater Manchester
North East
North West
South West
Wales
Yorkshire and Humber
If you’re interested there’s still time to submit your application. This is your chance to earn while you learn, gain a degree equivalent qualification, and play an essential role in your community and the wider justice system.
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Nothing says “high demand, thriving profession” quite like repeatedly extending the application deadline. We’re told the staffing pipeline is being strengthened with 1,300 trainees. Yet deadlines keep shifting. Almost as if the issue isn’t awareness… but attractiveness.
And while we’re here, just a small but important point. PQiP leads to a Level 6 professional qualification. That sits at the same academic level as a bachelor’s degree. It is not the same thing as being awarded a university degree. Calling it “degree equivalent” is shorthand for level, not status. That distinction matters not because the training lacks value, but because clarity builds credibility.
The bigger question isn’t the label. It’s whether newly qualified staff enter a service where:
• Experienced mentors are available
• Workloads are manageable
• Professional judgement is respected
• Pay progression makes staying worthwhile
You can rename a qualification and you can extend a deadline. But unless the job itself is sustainable, recruitment campaigns become a revolving door and that’s the part no advert fixes. No panic though. Everything’s fine.
Nothing says “high demand, thriving profession” quite like repeatedly extending the application deadline. We’re told the staffing pipeline is being strengthened with 1,300 trainees. Yet deadlines keep shifting. Almost as if the issue isn’t awareness… but attractiveness.
And while we’re here, just a small but important point. PQiP leads to a Level 6 professional qualification. That sits at the same academic level as a bachelor’s degree. It is not the same thing as being awarded a university degree. Calling it “degree equivalent” is shorthand for level, not status. That distinction matters not because the training lacks value, but because clarity builds credibility.
The bigger question isn’t the label. It’s whether newly qualified staff enter a service where:
• Experienced mentors are available
• Workloads are manageable
• Professional judgement is respected
• Pay progression makes staying worthwhile
You can rename a qualification and you can extend a deadline. But unless the job itself is sustainable, recruitment campaigns become a revolving door and that’s the part no advert fixes. No panic though. Everything’s fine.
So it's not a degree is it. That is bullshit and equivalent like things are never the real deal. It's a con degrees are uni issues after real enrollment to a real process this pquip is gloss no one believes it's value .
ReplyDeleteIt is a degree, in Community Justice, or if you have a relevant previous degree then it’s a graduate diploma. De Montford University and Portsmouth University run both. Not sure why you think it’s a “degree equivalent”.
ReplyDeleteIt's lipstick bright shouty loud lipstick a lovely rouge . Shame it's lipstick on a pig.
Delete
ReplyDeleteWe need to be real about the future of probation. You couldn’t make it up really. A new Sentencing Act, £700 million invested in Ai and IT, and 1,000 new trainee probation officers promised, yet here we are on the precipice with rising workloads, growing uncertainty and a carefully packaged 4% pay offer presented as progress. We’re told probation is “extraordinary work”; the glossy recruitment adverts insist on it. But scratch beneath the surface and a different picture of probation in 2026 begins to emerge.
Imagine every probation office of the near future. An offender walks in, places their bag in a locker and pauses at the door to be facially and bodily scanned. If the system does not recognise them, or flags an unknown object in a pocket, a security wand completes the ritual. Efficient. Controlled. Managed. They sit and wait for their probation practitioner, who is likely newly qualified, recently out of university, bright and well-intentioned but learning the craft in a system that no longer appears to value craft. It isn’t their fault. They need employment and income like anyone else. Many will leave when something more stable or better paid appears, unless they are accelerated into management within a year if their psychometrics fit.
They move to a supervision room. An induction, a toolkit session, a review of licence conditions, delivered through structured prompts. Tick boxes completed. Risk assessment refreshed. Every word captured in real time by Justice Transcribe AI and uploaded directly into the case management system. Reports drafted instantly. Risk tools auto-populated. Supervision records formatted before the conversation has properly settled. The practitioner informs the individual that their risk level has been lowered. Not necessarily through nuanced professional judgement shaped by experience and relational depth, but because the algorithm indicates it. The outcome is eligibility for automated reporting. Instead of attending weekly or fortnightly, the offender now logs into an app once a month, speaks to an AI interface and confirms everything is fine. Compliance recorded. Case maintained. Human contact reduced to exception management.
Meanwhile, the probation practitioner holds a caseload exceeding 100. With no short sentences going into custody, probation absorbs the volume. Post-Sentence Supervision has ended, everyone is electronically tagged and tracked, and recalls recycle through the system with predictable speed of less than 2 months. Reports are AI-drafted. Risk assessments AI-assisted. Supervision notes AI-transcribed. Enforcement actions processed by administrative teams prompted by automated flags. Half the caseload reports digitally. The practitioner’s role becomes one of oversight rather than engagement, validation rather than intervention. Professional discretion narrows as the system standardises responses. Time once spent building motivation or challenging thinking is redirected into monitoring dashboards, tracking offenders on tags, and ensuring the technology has functioned correctly.
At that point, the question becomes uncomfortable. If supervision is automated, reporting is automated, monitoring is tagging and tracking, enforcement is automated and risk assessment is automated, what exactly are the 1,000 new probation officers for? What is the long-term workforce plan in a service increasingly shaped around digital compliance? Perhaps the 4% pay offer was not misjudged after all. Perhaps it was transitional, and intentional. It is easier to contain pay when you quietly redesign the profession to be less.
On a shelf somewhere in that office sits a book with that old motto: advise, assist, befriend. It reads almost like an artefact from another era. Now replaced by scripted prompts, app notifications, dashboards and tracking. This may sound exaggerated, even dystopian, but the building blocks are already visible. Technology and AI isn’t enhancing probation, it’s replacing it now.
Guest Blog 26
DeleteAdvise, Assist and Befriend.
https://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2015/02/guest-blog-26.html?m=1
Spot on! All of this is already operating in pilots.
DeleteI doubt that George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty -,Four is on any pre PQIP start reading list like it was on the pre Clare Morris CQSW course at The University of Liverpool in the 1970s.
DeleteI think part of the confusion here is that different parts of the system describe the qualification differently.
ReplyDeleteThe advert says:
“Level 6 Professional Qualification in Probation. This is a combination of a Level 5 Diploma in Probation Practice and a Diploma of Community Justice.”
The webinar refers to a “degree level qualification.”
The universities (for example De Montfort and Portsmouth) advertise a BA (Hons) Community Justice delivered alongside the vocational elements, which together make up PQiP.
Those phrases are not identical but they’re not necessarily contradictory either.
“Level 6” refers to the academic framework level. That is the same level as a bachelor’s degree on the Regulated Qualifications Framework.
“Degree level” means the level of study is equivalent to that of a bachelor’s degree.
A “BA (Hons)” is a named university award.
Where a university partner is awarding a BA (Hons) Community Justice as part of PQiP, then yes that is a degree. Where delivery routes differ, the professional qualification itself may be described primarily in framework terms rather than by the academic title.
So the disagreement isn’t really about whether the training has value. It does. It’s demanding and people work incredibly hard to complete it.
The issue is clarity. When wording shifts between “degree”, “degree level”, “degree equivalent”, and “professional qualification”, people understandably ask which is which. In a profession built on precision, that kind of ambiguity jars.
But stepping back, the label is not the real problem.
Call it a BA.
Call it a Level 6 Professional Qualification.
Call it degree-level.
The bigger question is what happens after qualification.
Do newly qualified officers enter teams with:
• Experienced mentors available
• Workloads that allow learning rather than survival
• Space for reflective supervision
• The confidence to exercise professional judgement
• Pay progression that makes staying worthwhile
Because a qualification, however described, does not substitute for experience. And experience cannot be manufactured at scale.
If the service is numerically staffed but thin on institutional memory, the risk doesn’t disappear. It just becomes harder to detect and harder to manage.
So yes, accuracy in wording matters. But the sustainability of the profession matters more.
You can debate the title of the qualification. What will determine the future of probation is whether the job that follows it is one people can actually stay in.
That’s the part we should probably be focusing on.
@anon 09:01
ReplyDeleteI understand why this vision resonates. When you line up the Sentencing Act, AI investment, recruitment drives and a restrained pay offer, it is easy to see a pattern forming.
But I am not sure the future is quite as linear or as inevitable as that picture suggests.
Technology can standardise process. It can draft text. It can flag patterns. It can simulate structured questioning. What it cannot do is hold professional responsibility.
When something escalates, when risk shifts subtly, when someone presents compliant but feels off, when a safeguarding concern sits between the lines, that is not an algorithmic moment. It is a judgement moment.
And judgement carries liability.
If AI drafts a report, a practitioner still signs it.
If a tool auto populates a risk score, someone still owns the decision.
If digital reporting replaces face to face contact, someone still answers when that person reoffends.
That accountability alone makes full substitution far less straightforward than it sounds.
Where this post really lands is in the cultural shift it describes. If probation becomes increasingly process driven, metrics led and efficiency framed, then the role risks narrowing. Not disappearing. Narrowing.
More monitoring.
Less relational depth.
More compliance oversight.
Less discretionary craft.
That is not necessarily dystopia. But it is redesign.
The uncomfortable question is not whether AI replaces probation officers. It is whether probation officers become system managers rather than practitioners.
If caseloads remain high and experience thins out while automation increases, the risk is not that humans vanish. The risk is that humans become supervisors of workflow rather than agents of change.
That is a philosophical shift as much as an operational one.
The old motto of advise, assist, befriend was rooted in human relationship. Modern probation cannot return to a previous era. But if we lose the relational core entirely, we are not simply modernising. We are redefining the purpose of the role.
Technology will expand. That is inevitable.
Whether it replaces probation or reshapes it depends on how deliberately boundaries are drawn now.
If AI is used to reduce administrative burden and protect practitioner time, it strengthens the profession.
If it is used to justify higher caseloads, thinner experience and contained pay, then it becomes substitution by stealth.
The future is not written yet.
But the design choices being made now will determine which version of that office we eventually walk into.
9:01 is spot on. It’s exactly what’s already in play in pilots around the country. 2026 joins it all up under the new act.
DeleteAI pilots aren’t a secret. Digital reporting isn’t hidden. The investment in IT has been publicly announced. So no, this isn’t some covert operation.
DeleteThe issue isn’t transparency at a surface level. It’s direction.
What hasn’t been clearly articulated is what probation is meant to look like in five years if all of this becomes embedded. How much supervision becomes digital? How much judgement becomes system-led? What happens to the skill mix? What happens to pay expectations if the role shifts?
Each piece is presented as supportive in isolation. But when you step back, it starts to look like redesign.
That’s where the unease comes from. Not panic. Not paranoia. Pattern recognition.
You don’t need to frame it as conspiracy to recognise direction of travel. This isn’t coincidence and it isn’t accidental drift. When AI pilots, digital reporting, tagging expansion and workforce churn all move at the same time, that’s not random, that’s design. Roll it out as pilots, normalise it, scale it nationally, and by the time people realise the cumulative shift, the model has already changed. No one is saying it’s secret. It’s happening in plain sight. The issue is whether we’re honest that this is a redesign of probation’s core function, from relational practice to digitally managed compliance. Call it modernisation if you like, I call it the end, but let’s not pretend it’s neutral or a coincidence.
DeleteWhat I continue to find incredible that people can graduate with a degree, leave the service & face no economic consequences. Other young people are taking on eye watering debt but not making significantly higher wages. I appreciate that PQIPS are working as PSOs and therefore being paid a wage but it should be possible for some economic consequences to be visited upon NQOs who jump ship post qualifying. For context my son graduated 10 years ago, qualified as a teacher, works in a tough inner London comprehensive and now owes more money than borrowed.
ReplyDeleteagreed
DeleteDisagree!! The main reason NQO's leave is because the recruitment is crap, the training is worse and a lot on qualifying are just dumped on with little support or guidance! Maybe those in charge of recruitment & training should be financially penalised instead so they up there game
DeleteLet's hope he is not teaching maths
DeleteI understand the frustration behind the idea of financial penalties for NQOs who leave quickly. When people use PQiP as a springboard into a Masters, another profession, or rapid promotion, it can feel like the service doesn't care about building stability (which you could argue is the case right now!)
DeleteBut I’m not convinced penalties are the answer.
The deeper issue is that probation has lost the concept of steady professional grounding. Qualification should be the beginning of practice, not the peak of it. A Level 6 award or even a BA does not substitute for five years of seeing risk unfold, managing setbacks, learning to challenge appropriately, and mentoring someone newer than you.
Experience is not automatic. It beds in over time. It develops judgement. It builds the confidence to say no to unsafe allocation. It teaches you how to supervise others well if you move into SPO roles. That kind of professional development cannot be accelerated by psychometrics or qualifications alone.
If newly qualified officers are leaving or fast-tracking upwards, we should ask why staying is not attractive enough. Pay, workload, supervision, culture. Those are retention levers.
A profession cannot rely on academic input alone. It needs time served, reflective practice, and layered experience. If we fix that, we don’t need penalties. People will want to stay long enough to become properly grounded practitioners.
Last week, in the morning, a colleague of mine got a email from the parole board (following an oral hearing) declining release as they thought the offender lacked the skills to self moderate his behaviour and that his risk was therefore unmanageable in the community.
ReplyDeleteIn the afternoon, he got a email advising that the offender was being released under the FTR56.
Make it make sense, please!
That example captures the incoherence many practitioners are wrestling with.
DeleteOn one hand, a judicial body determines risk is unmanageable in the community.
On the other, policy mechanisms trigger release regardless.
When operational decisions, political pressure and risk assessments move in different directions, the person holding the case carries the tension.
That’s not about ideology. It’s about structural contradiction and it erodes practitioner confidence over time.
As a slight aside and whilst wishing everyone a kind/good day Ive come across this tweet from Nacro https://shorturl.at/WkRZg I hope this link works IanGould5
ReplyDeleteNa to betrayed probation in the 20s they used to be principles but sold out.
DeleteApologies phone auto change messed that up. Nacro betrayed us in probation by going for the money and our work in the 2000s on . Before that they were ok.
DeleteWhat people are forgetting is that until recently PQIP has had the requirement for a degree prior to entry - so I doubt the concept of a “ free degree” was motivating or considered much benefit .
DeleteOff topic but is anyone watching the news farage thinks he is official opposition . Starmer loses jr to reform . May elections back on which should never have been toyed with. I think labour are in difficulty or at least starmer come may. Big signal coming next week by election.
ReplyDeleteposted this morning on the previous blog:
ReplyDelete"Released today:
"The following information is for the period from October to December 2025.
Annual growth in employees' average earnings was 4.2% for both regular earnings (excluding bonuses) and total earnings (including bonuses).
Annual average regular earnings growth was 7.2% for the public sector and 3.4% for the private sector; however, the public sector annual growth rate is affected by some public sector pay rises being paid earlier in 2025 than in 2024"
*** Public sector pay growth DOWN to 7.2% & some public sector pay rises being PAID EARLIER in 2025 ***
How's that make you feel?"
Makes me feel very very angry.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0zjw5pz48o
ReplyDeleteThe frontrunner to be the next head of the UK civil service faced allegations from several people about her behaviour when she was a senior diplomat in New York, according to documents seen by the BBC.
Former officials have told the BBC that it is "disingenuous" for the Cabinet Office to state that there had only been a single official complaint.
Dame Antonia Romeo is currently the senior civil servant at the Home Office and is highly regarded by some in Whitehall for her ability to get things done.
But claims about her conduct when she was the UK's consul general in New York a decade ago have led to critics to question her suitability for the role of cabinet secretary, which would put her at the head of the civil service.
The government says three allegations relating to her use of expenses and bullying of staff when she was in New York were investigated and there was "no case to answer".
The Cabinet Office said the three allegations were from a single complaint, that she had been spoken to about her management style after the complaint had been dismissed, and that no similar claims have been raised in any of her other roles.
Sources have told the BBC there had, in fact, been complaints about Dame Antonia's conduct in New York from several people.
Sir Matthew Rycroft, who was the UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York when Dame Antonia was consul general and Rupert McNeil, the government's then head of human resources have both said in recent days that there were was just one complaint.
But a source told the BBC: "To argue publicly that there was just one complaint is willfully misleading. They were presented to London in one dossier, but there were multiple complaints."
In documents setting out the complaints, Dame Antonia is described as behaving in an "unreasonable," "degrading," and "demeaning" way towards staff and of being more interested in promoting her own "personal brand" on social media than that of the UK government.
"She's a diplomat, not a D-list celebrity. My 15-year-old, social media obsessed, brother is less shameless in his self-promotion," reads some contemporaneous testimony.
One member of the UK's team described feeling "emotionally battered".
contd...
As the UK's consul general between 2016 and 2017 Dame Antonia's job involved promoting UK trade and business in New York, in the immediate aftermath of the referendum to take Britain out of the EU.
Deletepart 2
The BBC has learned that 47% of staff in New York said they had experienced bullying in the workplace in an annual staff survey - the highest level ever recorded anywhere in the Foreign Office.
It is understood that in most government departments or divisions the figure is usually in low single figures.
The survey covered a 12 month period, including three months in which Dame Antonia was in post.
Dame Antonia's critics acknowledge her abilities in documents seen by the BBC, with one saying she was "smart, dynamic and really talented." Another said she was an "extremely intelligent, innovative thinker".
But there was also criticism of her management style, with one person saying she was "very demanding, very disrespectful, very threatening".
"I'm used to big egos but this was something else. The minute she heard the word 'no' she'd say I'll go to your boss. But it was worse than that. She would go to your boss's boss and your boss's boss's boss," they added.
Someone else told us: "If you don't say 'yes' to her she's not only going to screw your career, but she'll screw all of those around you."
Her approach, it was claimed, "inflames rather than calms a situation" and "creates a culture of fear and anxiety".
The majority of the complaints seen by the BBC were from female members of staff.
The allegations were so serious a former ambassador to Japan, Sir Tim Hitchens, was flown to New York to look into it.
His work examined allegations of "bullying behaviour, financial probity, and putting her private objectives above those of the wider Consulate-General or government".
The BBC has been told the Foreign Office's investigation concluded there was a case for Dame Antonia to answer about her behaviour towards colleagues, but there was no case to answer about what was called "financial probity" and is understood to refer to expenses.
A Whitehall source said: "The fact that selective excerpts are now being resurfaced, almost a decade on, to substantiate vexatious anonymous briefings from disgruntled individuals is frankly unconscionable."
An email from the time raised concerns about Dame Antonia's use of social media.
It said: "Antonia's obsession with promoting her personal brand over the work and priorities of HMG has created an untenably tense and bullying atmosphere for all staff".
Staff also reported, as one put it, that Romeo insisted they "frame articles in Vogue and the New Yorker about her and place them in the Residence guest bathroom directly in the line of site at all angles so that regardless of, um, how you use the bathroom, you have to stare at a photo of her in a magazine spread staring back at you."
One former colleague said in an email: "I'm extremely alarmed that Antonia, who holds one of the highest diplomatic positions here in the United States, seems to be focusing an undue amount on building her personal Twitter brand."
Government sources say the magazine interviews were arranged by the Foreign Office communications team and it is the role of any diplomat overseas to promote the UK and British brands, including on social media.
Dame Antonia has held a string of senior roles since her time in New York and is currently one of three figures sharing the role of cabinet secretary on an interim basis, following the departure of Sir Chris Wormald last week.
No sign of £700 m being invested in AI or a working EM system fit for purpose. Our IT systems are desperately in need of an upgrade and this has been slow after the TR debacle. Simply put there has been under investment in both our prison system and Probation. We need a substantial pay rise that will attract second careerists rather than wet behind the ears graduates. We need decent offices and the latest tech. For goodness sake we have been putting up with crap for years. Why shouldn’t we have nice things that save time. I’ve been using the new Transcription and it’s marvellous. I’m near retirement but if I’d had this a year ago I’d have welcomed it. Don’t think it cost much as it was built by the government and it’s run by MoJ. Cheap as chips and works a treat. Stop misleading people saying it millions. Instead ask when you can have it. Good officers want more things like this and better pay.
ReplyDeleteRead anon 09:01. That’s what the money is going on. Tagging, ai, supporting software and hardware, and all the consulting fees too.
DeleteYes now interpret deeper ai will check tagging by facial voice Tel contact checks and pulse measurement no need for servo staff either
Delete09:01 is wrong. No one in HQ knows, and certainly no one outside of it knows, where the money is going to be spent. It is pure speculation and guesses until confirmed. If someone has concrete evidence that this money is available and has actually been allocated then provide it otherwise it’s a pipe dream. Yes, some money will inevitably be spent on modernising but the government needs to chuck money at priorities like defence and the NHS. Our minister isn’t a big beast or particularly adept at the negotiating table. We are low down on the list. Can you imagine him grabbing such a sum at this time from more savvy operators? The £700m has not materialised and will probably be sliced in a lot of ways that will mean we will not see it as extra cash.
DeleteThere’s truth in what you’re saying.
DeleteNo one outside central planning has seen a detailed breakdown of the £700m. We don’t know how much is capital versus revenue, how much is genuinely new money versus re-profiling, or how much will land directly in frontline probation.
In the current climate, justice does sit behind defence and the NHS in political priority terms. That’s reality.
But that doesn’t make concerns about direction speculative. We can see digital pilots expanding. We can see tagging growth. We can see transcription tools being rolled out. We can see recruitment targets set against experience shortfalls.
The issue isn’t that money doesn’t exist. It’s that there’s no transparent narrative about what the long term workforce model looks like alongside that digital shift.
If the investment is real, publish the breakdown. If the strategy is coherent, articulate it. If technology is enhancement, show how experience is being protected.
When information is partial, people infer. That’s not fantasy, it's just what happens when structural change and workforce anxiety collide.
Transparency would calm most of this overnight.
“An extraordinary job. Done by someone like you.”
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thesun.co.uk/news/38236607/lovestruck-probation-officer-kisses-murderer-lag-lover-prison/