- Earlier release depends on probation.
- Community sentences replacing short custody depend on probation.
- Electronic monitoring, restriction zones, curfews and tighter licence conditions depend on probation.
- Recall decisions depend on probation.
- OFPS depends on probation.
- Public reassurance that people released earlier can be “safely managed in the community” depends on probation.
We have been here before. There was industrial action during TR, but the Government still pushed the reforms through. Whatever view people take of what happened then, the lesson surely has to be that symbolic action is not enough.
If industrial action happens this time, it needs to have a clear objective and it needs to matter operationally. There is little point in a protest that allows the machinery of the system to continue almost unaffected while everybody congratulates themselves for having “made their voice heard”.
The Government needs probation functioning. That is the bargaining power. And this cannot be reduced to “staff want more money”. Pay matters because retention matters, but the dispute is much bigger than that: workload, professional judgement, staffing, experience, safety, OFPS, the removal of workload visibility and the expectation that probation will absorb every consequence of the prison crisis.
Practitioners have spent years being told that they are essential, valued and the “hidden heroes” of the justice system. Fine. Then perhaps it is time to discover exactly how essential probation really is. Because if the Government genuinely cannot deliver its sentencing reforms, early-release programme and community supervision model without probation, then “without probation none of this can happen” should not just be a slogan in a press release. It should be the starting point for negotiations.
And if ever there were a moment for the unions to stop asking politely, stop “urging”, stop accepting warm words and actually use the collective power of the workforce they represent, surely this is it. The Government has built its solution to the prison crisis on the assumption that probation will somehow absorb the consequences. Perhaps probation should finally stop making that assumption safe for them.
Anon
"if ever there were a moment for the unions to stop asking politely, stop “urging”, stop accepting warm words and actually use the collective power of the workforce they represent, surely this is it."
ReplyDeleteWon't happen. Want it to, but it won't. Union members who are unsure will be threatened, intimidated & bullied into being frightened about 'consequences' for their careers.
Is there a significant number of staff who *could* make a stand?
napo's 2025 AR21 is now published. It shows just shy of 7,000 members for year ended 31 Dec 2025 out of about 13,000 po/pso/spo staffing complement, ~54%.
The ar21 also shows a total wage bill at ~£770,000 of which the gen sec got ~£125,000 (106k + 19k pension) including pension contributions... a £5k lift from 2024 (104k + 16k pension)
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a7c83e674a4fffff664d0a2/AR21_2025.pdf
That is perhaps the uncomfortable question: is there a significant enough number of staff prepared to make a stand?
ReplyDeleteNapo’s newly published AR21 gives us 6,895 members at the end of 2025. That’s not an insignificant body of people.
And I completely understand the pessimism. People have mortgages, families and careers. Probation also has a culture in which individual accountability weighs incredibly heavily, so telling somebody to withdraw their labour when they are carrying high-risk cases is not remotely the same as casually saying “everyone should strike”.
But surely that is precisely why collective action matters.
One practitioner refusing something is exposed.
Thousands refusing together is an industrial dispute.
And I think we need to be very careful about allowing fear of “what might happen to my cases/career if I take lawful industrial action?” to become the very mechanism that makes meaningful industrial action impossible.
Because look at the position probation is now in.
Government needs probation to implement early release.
It needs probation to implement the Progression Model.
It needs probation to deliver OFPS.
It needs probation to manage increased community sentences.
It needs probation to operate greatly expanded electronic monitoring, restriction zones and licence conditions.
It needs probation to assess breaches and make recall decisions.
And simultaneously we are being told that probation does not have sufficient capacity to do the job it already has.
If nearly 7,000 Napo members cannot exercise meaningful collective leverage now, when virtually the entire Government solution to the prison crisis depends upon probation continuing to function, when exactly will they ever be in a stronger position?
Interestingly, the same AR21 records no industrial-action ballot during 2025. It also confirms that Napo actually maintains an Action Fund specifically to help offset financial loss suffered by members taking bona fide industrial action.
So perhaps the question needs putting back to the union leadership as much as to individual members.
What is the strategy?
What are the demands?
What would meaningful action look like?
How will members worried about professional consequences be protected and supported?
And what is the point at which “urging Government to act” becomes accepting that Government isn’t going to act unless failing to do so has consequences?
Because I don’t particularly want probation staff to strike.
I want conditions in probation to change so they don’t have to.
But after years of warnings, reports, inspections, workload crises, recruitment problems, experienced practitioners leaving and endless promises that concerns are being heard, I’m struggling to see what leverage remains if the collective one isn’t actually used.
The Government has made itself extraordinarily dependent upon probation.
That ought to give the workforce power.
The tragedy would be having that power and being too frightened, divided or badly led to use it.
I checked the latest official HMPPS statistics, published on 20 August. At 30 June 2026.
ReplyDeleteIt gets better — or worse. The latest figures show:
* 5,465 FTE Band 4 POs: down 2% in one quarter.
* 5,924 FTE Band 3 PSOs: up substantially — 13.6% over the year.
* 1,602 FTE Band 5 SPOs: up 5%.
* PO shortfall: 1,935 FTE, against HMPPS’s own staffing requirement.
* 2,099 FTE PQiP trainees in training.
HM Inspectorate had already found nationally that around half of staff said their workloads were unmanageable, with PO workloads particularly high. It also reported high sickness — around 15.5 days annually for POs — and described staffing shortages as a significant concern.
And there’s an even bigger capacity figure sitting in an MoJ document: its prison-capacity statement says the projected sentence-management capacity gap for 2026/27 is 3,150 FTE across all grades. It explicitly acknowledges that recruitment growth started from a low baseline and “has not yet fully offset increased workload pressure or historic deficits in staffing.
And experience matters too: only 34.4% of Band 4 POs had 10+ years’ HMPPS service, down from 36.1% a year earlier. HMPPS cautions that its service measure isn’t identical to time as a PO, but the direction is still relevant.
HM Inspectorate has found PO vacancy rates exceeding 30% in some regions. Yorkshire and the Humber was operating at only 89% of its overall staffing target when inspected, with inspectors explicitly identifying workforce instability and high vacancy rates as continuing problems.
Yet this is the workforce expected to absorb earlier prison releases, sentencing reform, OFPS, new supervision arrangements, expanded electronic monitoring, restriction zones and whatever else is announced between now and October.
And every time anyone asks whether probation has the capacity to do it safely, somebody pulls the string:
“£700 million.”
“1,300 trainees.”
“Recruitment targets.”
Those aren’t measures of operational capacity.
Here’s one that is:
Required POs: 7,380.
Actual POs: 5,445.
Missing: 1,935.
Perhaps ministers could start putting that figure in their press releases.
And perhaps the question isn’t how many people are being recruited. It’s why, on the eve of the biggest change to probation in years, HMPPS is still operating with barely three quarters of the qualified PO workforce it says it needs.
You cannot recruit your way out of an experience crisis overnight. You certainly cannot announce thousands of trainees while the qualified workforce is actually shrinking and call the capacity problem solved.
These aren’t disgruntled practitioners’ figures. They’re HMPPS’s.