The Merging of NPS and CRC Services Verbal Update
To receive a verbal update from the National Probation Service.
Minutes:
The Partnership received a verbal update from Karen Rooney, Merseyside Community Rehabilitation Company, and Martin Gay, Merseyside National Probation Service, on the merging of the National Probation Services and Community Rehabilitation Companies.
Ms. Rooney stated that on 16 May 2019, the Ministry of Justice published ‘Strengthening Probation, Building Confidence’. This document set out the plans for the future of the probation services which had been informed by both a period of consultation and published reports from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation and the National Audit Office, which raised concerns about the current probation delivery model.
From the Spring of 2021 the offender management functions within the National Probation Service and the Community Rehabilitation Companies, would be amalgamated into one and would retain the name National Probation Service. The private and voluntary sector, operating on a divisional footprint under new contractual agreements, would deliver offending behaviour programmes, treatment requirements, unpaid work and other interventions.
The North-West division (Merseyside, Cheshire, Lancashire and Cumbria) would be a separate division to the Greater Manchester part of the division. Since the start of ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ five years ago, North West National Probation Service and Interserve Community Rehabilitation Company managers and practitioners had worked closely together to ensure that probation services were delivered safely and to a high standard.
This close liaison and collaboration would continue until Spring 2021. National Probation Service and Community Rehabilitation Company colleagues would continue to work together to deliver the change with great care in order to maintain a stable National Probation Service and Community Rehabilitation Company with good practice and which would command the confidence of the Courts, of victims and the communities that they serve. This would include the maintenance of their commitment to partners in relation to public protection, victims work and rehabilitation.
Ms. Rooney concluded that over the next two years, as the new National Probation Service was due to emerge, they would anticipate a refreshed combination of private and voluntary sector delivery of interventions. Their ambition was to safeguard the delivery of services alongside realising the benefits of Offender Management combined within one organisation. They would focus on public protection, support and supervision, resettlement and rehabilitation, with every offender under probation supervision whether they were serving short or long custodial sentences, whether they were in custody or in the community, whether they were on a community sentence, or whether they posed a low, medium or high risk of serious harm.
Together they would ensure that they retained a focus on delivering on local partnership agendas, and would keep the Sefton Safer Communities Partnership up to date as and when they had more detail.
RESOLVED:
That Ms. Rooney and Mr. Gay be thanked for their informative update.