Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he is taking steps to help reduce the case workloads of probation officers.

We are working to reduce workload pressures through recruitment and retention of staff and published the first Probation Service Recruitment and Retention Strategy in April 2021.

To reduce workloads, the Probation Service is committed to increasing recruitment of Probation Officers, particularly in areas with significant local employment market challenges. We exceeded our recruitment targets for 2020/21 and 2021/22, recruiting 1,007 and 1,518 trainees respectively, and aim to recruit a further 1,500 trainees this financial year.

We have centralised recruitment of key operational roles to expedite recruitment in 6 priority regions, including London, and mobilised schemes to financially incentivise new and existing staff to move permanently to areas with the most significant staffing challenges.

We have increased local outreach to improve awareness of Probation and the roles available, as well as refreshing our marketing to ensure we are attracting sufficient applications. We are committed to widening routes to achieve probation qualifications by developing pathways for existing staff, as well as creating routes for those without a graduate degree.

A prioritisation framework has been introduced to provide clarity for Probation staff on prioritisation of tasks and what can be reduced/paused when capacity issues begin to impact on operational delivery.