Community Rehabilitation Companies

(asked on 30th October 2017) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what lessons have been learnt from implementing the first contract for the delivery of probation services by community rehabilitation companies in England and Wales; and how those lessons inform his Department's approach to implementing the second contract in four years' time.


Answered by
Sam Gyimah Portrait
Sam Gyimah
This question was answered on 7th November 2017

The Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms introduced in 2013/14 were delivered to agreed timescales. In their report published in April 2016, the National Audit Office noted that ‘services have been sustained throughout a period of major change, with users reporting that services had stayed the same or improved’.

We closely monitor the performance of both the NPS and CRCs to make sure services are protecting the public, reducing reoffending and delivering the orders of the court. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation has found the work of the NPS to be good in many regions, and recently praised Cumbria CRC for ‘prioritising public protection’ and their ‘quality of assessment and planning’. Despite extending supervision to around 40,000 additional released prisoners each year and introducing new services, overall spend on the probation system has remained broadly stable.

We recognise that probation needs to improve and aspects of service are falling short of our expectations. That is why we conducted an internal review of the probation system and as a result made changes to CRC contracts to reflect more accurately the fixed costs of delivering services to offenders. This will enable providers to focus on delivery of critical operational services, although payments are still below original forecasts. We continue to keep the operation of the probation system under review and are exploring further improvements that could be made to the delivery of services.

Reticulating Splines