The National Audit Office has floated fears about plans to reform the Probation Service, identifying two “principal risks” to the organisation’s resilience.
The public spending watchdog said the Probation Service has remained “under significant strain” since it returned to full public ownership in 2021, following the failed Transforming Rehabilitation programme.
According to the NAO, the Probation Service – which is part of HM Prison and Probation Service, within the Ministry of Justice – saw its performance drop by 24 percentage points in 2024-5, compared with 2021-22 levels.
The watchdog said that in 2024, probation practitioners adequately assessed risk of harm from offenders in just 28% cases, compared with 60% in 2018-19.
In a report published on Friday, it said worsening performance in the service was due to inexperienced staff and gaps in critical roles. It added that although HMPPS has been recruiting more staff, it found last year that it had underestimated the number of staff required to provide sentence management tasks by around a third – or 5,400 staff.
In February this year, HMPPS established the Our Future Probation Service programme to reduce workloads by 25% across the service through improving existing processes and changing the scope of probation supervision.
The NAO said a “high risk appetite” had been adopted for the programme, with the aim of increasing capacity in response to policy changes that are likely to put further pressures on the service. However, it said HMPPS and the MoJ had neither fully assessed the potential consequences of assuming a high level of risk nor set clear thresholds for how much risk the Probation Service can tolerate.
The NAO said the situation meant that it may be hard for the organisation to spot risks that become too high to manage.
According to the report, the principal risks to the long-term resilience of the Probation Service are uncertainty over whether HMPPS’s 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 said the significant gap between actual and required capacity and slow progress in improving productivity means the challenge the Probation Service faces is “huge”.
Among its recommendations, the NAO is calling on HMPPS to carry out a detailed assessment of the potential impacts of setting an “open” risk appetite for the OFPS programme, including seeking agreement from senior departmental staff.
It is also urging MoJ and HMPPS to agree clear risk thresholds to help manage trade-offs as the programme progresses and establish how they will measure whether thresholds are being breached.
The NAO added that HMPPS should also put contingency plans in place to mitigate any risks that materialise.
NAO head Gareth Davies said the government needed to ensure that the OFPS is actively managed to achieve its desired outcomes.
“A well-functioning Probation Service can ease the financial burden that reoffending imposes on society, which currently costs an estimated £21bn a year,” he said.
“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.”
An MoJ spokesperson said: “This government inherited a Probation Service under immense pressure and this has placed too great a burden on our hard-working staff.
“We are fixing it, with 1,000 trainee probation officers recruited last year and plans to recruit at least 1,300 more by April.
“We are also increasing the probation budget by an extra £700m over the next three years and investing in new technology to reduce admin so staff can focus on work that reduces reoffending, helping to protect the public as part of our Plan for Change.”