At the end of September, I will be stepping down as Chief Inspector of Probation after more than four years in the role. It’s been a huge privilege to hold this post and to work with such a great and committed team of inspectors and headquarters staff – but also to get to know so […]
Published: 21 September 2023
When I became Chief Inspector four years ago, I said that one of my early priorities was to establish if there was a link between effective probation supervision and real-life outcomes for people on probation. Our underlying assumption had always been that there is a golden thread that links great leadership and good services in […]
Published: 30 August 2023
After a January dominated by our reports on what has been going wrong with probation practice, February provided a welcome opportunity to focus on what has been going right with local youth offending services. In a presentation to Westminster Legal Policy Forum event, I was able to celebrate the ratings we have given to these […]
Published: 17 March 2023
Our independent serious further offence (SFO) reviews of Jordan McSweeney and the review of Damien Bendall, in the past couple of weeks, were deeply concerning. In the run up to publication, I had the chance to meet with the relatives of both Terri Harris and Zara Aleena and brief them on our findings, which was […]
Published: 02 February 2023
It was good to finish 2022 with some more positive news from our local probation inspections. Our inspection of two Probation Delivery Units (PDUs) in the Probation Service – North East region found “green shoots of hope”, with stable workforces, reasonable workloads, a positive and engaged staff culture and strong, visible and accessible leadership of […]
Published: 11 January 2023
It was good to be able to offer some reflections on the relationship between probation and the voluntary sector in a speech to the Clinks 2022 Annual Conference (PDF, 115 kB) this month. Given that the origins of the service, over a century ago, lie in the charitable sector and the early efforts of ‘court […]
Published: 25 November 2022
Our first inspection results for London Probation Service continued the worrying trend of the past year, with each of the three PDU reports we published on 18 October rated as ‘Inadequate’ and inadequate ratings for all of our case quality standards. We were particularly concerned about Hammersmith, Fulham, Kensington, Chelsea and Fulham PDU, where we […]
Published: 28 October 2022
The month of August brought with it the publication of our latest round of local probation service inspection reports, this time in the West Midlands (summarised here within our letter to the regional Probation Service – West Midlands (PDF, 334 kB)) – the fourth probation region we have inspected since unification of the probation service. […]
Published: 02 September 2022
One of my key priorities when I became Chief Inspector in 2019 was to increase the voice of people on probation, and children supervised by youth offending services, within our inspection methodology. So, I’m delighted to announce that from this month we have entered into a three-year contract with the organisation User Voice, to work […]
Published: 23 February 2022
It’s been a year of significant achievement but ongoing challenges too, for both probation and youth justice services. The transition to a unified public sector probation service at the end of June was managed well and broadly welcomed by staff working in the service, but as I said at the time, structural change by itself […]
Published: 08 December 2021
