BR06/2008
JMcK/JM

29th January 2008

To: Branch Chairs and Secretaries,
CAFCASS Co-Convenors

Dear Colleague

New NOMS and the Future of Probation

Jack Straw today announced the long awaited outcome of the Ministry of Justice Reorganisation.

The new structure for the MoJ brings the central and regional parts of HM Prison Service, (HMPS), and the Probation Service together under NOMS, with a new chief executive, Phil Wheatley - currently Director General of the HMPS. This new NOMS will concentrate on service delivery in both probation and prison services, leaving Helen Edwards to head up strategic policy for offender management, with the title of “Director General for Criminal Justice and Offender Management Strategy”.

Although the reorganisation directly relates to the structures of NOMS, Probation and Prison Service civil servants, both at the centre and in the regions, there will be implications for probation services at a local level.

Many detailed papers have been issued attempting to explain what it all means. These include the statement that Jack Straw made to the House of Commons on the reorganisation along with various letters from senior officials, all of which have been posted on EPIC. All these documents are also available on Napo’s website.

Commenting on these developments Napo’s press statement states:

“The announcement is a tacit admission that NOMS has failed. There is however a real risk that probation will be diminished in the new structure because of the financial demands of the prison service. Ministers must ensure that the changes do not result in yet another over bearing bureaucracy and that resources are diverted to the grossly under funded front line."

Whilst we might take some pleasure from the fact that this new structure is effectively an admission that NOMS has been a bureaucratic failure, we are concerned about the future independence and identity of the Probation Service under the new arrangements.

For all the detail that has been issued on this reorganisation, there are many unanswered questions for Napo.

In particular:

• What does this mean for the future national voice and leadership of the Probation Service?
• Who will speak up Probation with Ministers and the public?
• Will the concept, values and ethos, of Probation disappear into a new corrections agency?
• Probation funding is already in a crisis; what will this mean for future funding arrangements? Will Probation funding be ring fenced, or could it be threatened by an ever increasing prison population?
• What will this mean for Probation workloads?
• We are told there will be a Director of Probation until all Boards become Trusts; what then?
• What about ROMS? Will they cease to exist?
• Wales and London are due to pilot new ways of working between prisons and probation in relation to the new world of contracts; what will this mean in practice?
• Is this the end of the Probation Area Coordination Unit, PACU, in NOMS?
• What will happen to the Probation Service Human Resources’ (HR) functions currently undertaken in PACU? Will they transfer to the Prisons HR department? Will this have significance for our pay negotiations and national collective bargaining?
• What about the developments in relation to Probation training? Will these changes impact on the new qualification being developed?
• What about diversity? Probation no longer has a diversity unit at the centre, so how will diversity be promoted in the new structure proposed?

We have a series of meetings with Phil Wheatley, Helen Edwards and Roger Hill, over the next few days, where we will attempt to get answers to some of these questions.

More information will follow.

Yours sincerely,

Judy McKnight

General Secretary