12 May 2008
We received a petition asking:
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to review the Probation Service’s flat cash budget in order to save jobs within the service and ensure public protection is not compromised."
Details of Petition:
"The government claims to be ‘tough on crime’, yet has placed the Probation Service on a 3 year flat cash budget, meaning the Service receives exactly the same budget for the next 3 years and does not allow for annual pay increments or inflation costs. This is resulting in staff redundancies and recruitment freezes; the result of which is likely to be the compromise of public protection. The Probation Service needs to be staffed and funded to an adequate level in order for offenders and the risks they pose to be properly supervised and monitored. At a time when Probation workloads are increasing with more offenders being supervised within the community (particularly in view of the prison overcrowding crisis) it makes no sense to restrict the Probation Service in such a way. Help to ensure you and those you care about are protected from crime and its effects by supporting this petition for the government to review their decision on Probations budget."
Read the Government’s response
The Government remains committed to protecting the public and reducing re-offending, and values the achievements the Probation Service have made in ensuring year on year performance has improved since 2001.
In order to ensure the Probation Service continues to build upon the strong achievements of recent years, on 11 March the Government announced that the Proabtion Service will receive an additional £40 million. This is in addition to the extra £17 million funding earlier this year and the 5.4% average increase to the Board/Trust managed Approved Premises allocation. Of course, it is also important to remember that overall probation related services have benefited from a real terms budget increase of around 70% from 1996/97 to 2007/08.
The Government cannot give any commitment on recruitment freezes and compulsory redundancies, as these are matters for the local Probation Board. However, we are now confident that the increase in funding will alleviate budgetary pressures faced by probation areas.