Efficiency
Accessible knowledge point out that the efficiency of probation providers has worsened since unification. HMPPS units efficiency metrics and targets, reminiscent of timeliness of appointments and supply of providers. HMPPS solely met 26% (seven out of 27) of its targets in 2024-25, a 24 proportion level decline from 50% (eight out of 16) since July 2021 to March 2022. Some areas of efficiency are worse than others. In 2024-25, solely 63% of offenders accomplished their unpaid work (UPW) requirement throughout the 12-month deadline, though the goal was 75%.
Staffing
HMPPS considers continued shortages of certified employees and employees inexperience to be main contributing components to poor efficiency. Whereas the probation caseload has remained comparatively steady put up unification (round 242,000 in 2025), the proportion of higher-risk instances which may solely be dealt with by certified Probation Officers (POs) has elevated from 12% in June 2021 to 22% in December 2024. On the identical time, staffing shortages within the Probation Service have endured within the PO grade. In March 2025, there have been 5,636 full-time equal (FTE) POs within the Probation Service, some 79% of its goal staffing degree, leaving a shortfall of 1,479 POs. The proportion of inexperienced employees (with 4 years or much less of expertise) has elevated by 10 proportion factors since unification, from 28% in March 2021 to 38% in March 2025. Regardless of HMPPS growing trainee recruitment and introducing measures to enhance retention since 2021, its plans have been inadequate to deal with staffing shortfalls.
In 2025, HMPPS estimated that, even after considering its plans to cut back this staffing shortfall via recruitment and a few prioritisation measures, a capability hole of three,150 sentence administration FTE employees (out of roughly 15,000 sentence administration FTE employees required) would nonetheless stay in 2026-27
Prioritisation
In response to excessive workloads, HMPPS launched in 2022 a short lived prioritisation measure that prioritised public safety over rehabilitation; nevertheless, this didn’t scale back PO workloads sufficiently. HMPPS didn’t introduce additional main adjustments to workload till 2024 as a consequence of an absence of clear triggers for escalating capability dangers, however has since improved its strategy.
Transformation plans
In February 2025, HMPPS established its modern ‘Our Future Probation Service’ (OFPS) programme to cut back workloads by 25% throughout the service via enhancing current processes and altering the scope of probation supervision. It has adopted what the NAO phrases is a excessive threat urge for food for the programme, with the goal of accelerating capability in response to coverage adjustments which might be prone to put additional pressures on the service.
However HMPPS and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) haven’t totally assessed the potential penalties of OFPS assuming a excessive degree of threat, nor have they set clear thresholds for the way a lot threat the Probation Service can tolerate, which suggests it might be laborious to identify dangers that turn into too excessive to handle.
The NAO’s report identifies two principal dangers to the long-term resilience of the Probation Service:
uncertainty over whether or not HMPPS proposals will unencumber ample capability to enhance efficiency, andthe attainable opposed influence of adjustments on public safety, rehabilitation and wider authorities aims reminiscent of its ‘safer streets’ mission, if they don’t seem to be actively managed.
Suggestions
The NAO recommends that MoJ and HMPPS:
take a strong strategy to understanding and managing dangers related to its OFPS programme;
take steps to minimise the influence of change on probation employees;be certain that ample capability is freed as much as enhance the standard of probation supervision; andimplement sturdy monitoring and analysis to evaluate and react to the influence of adjustments on the extent and depth of probation supervision and assist.
