HM Inspectorate's National Inspection of Probation Consultation
The Rehabilitating Probation team have informed the HM Probation Inspectorate’s consultation on a national inspection of probation. This national inspection will take place in early 2025. By contrast to the inspections of individual probation delivery units (PDUs), this inspection will examine the national arrangements for probation. We are pleased to see that the finalised national probation inspection standards appear to have incorporated many of our suggestions, especially as regards Part 1: Leadership and Governance. We look forward to continuing to engage with HM Probation Inspectorate, and other stakeholders, going forwards.
Our response, which is available in full here, advised that a national inspection would serve as a beneficial complement to existing inspection arrangements and would come at a timely moment for probation.
Our response included suggestions for specific refinements that would suitably recognise the empowerment of leaders of the local units and regional areas for probation, expecting the national ‘centre’ to enable and support, as much as (where necessary) providing a greater level of direction.
More broadly, and based directly on our research with probation practitioners, we advised that it was likely that staff would respond positively to the Inspectorate’s stated intention to broaden its focus onto important aspects of the systematic problems and the national centre’s role in ameliorating or exacerbating them.
We advised that a national level inspection would likely help to surface the complexity of delivering impactful probation practice. This would validate the observations shared by practitioners about the need to place day-to-day realities of service delivery within its broader systematic context.
We concluded our response by observing that after so many years of focus on structural change in probation, and more recently responding to urgent crises like prison overcrowding, there remains the need to be fostered an ongoing, pluralistic debate about the current and desired future nature of probation practice: what does good probation work look like? And how can this best be achieved?