Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department has taken to help ensure delivery of probation services during covid-19 lockdowns.

Throughout the pandemic the Probation Service has prioritised public protection and risk management, as well as delivery of advice to courts in all regions, whilst ensuring staff, people on probation and victims remain safe.

A Gold, Silver and Bronze structure was quickly put into place to enable fast-paced decisions to be taken in response to the emerging situation, providing an agile approach. Exceptional Delivery Models, which set out how we operate key aspects of our work during the pandemic and ensured services could be continued, were developed and implemented across England and Wales. Exceptional Delivery Models allow Regional Probation Directors to take decisions locally regarding what their teams deliver, based on the individual circumstances of their regions.

Guided by public health advice, we took immediate, decisive action to implement a suite of measures to respond to the pandemic, moving to a mixture of face to face and remote methods. In-person socially distanced offender reporting has continued to be the default for people on probation who pose a higher risk, for example Terrorism Act offenders.

After our initial response to Covid, we reintroduced services as and when appropriate. We continued to rebuild throughout the year, however in response to the most recent national restrictions introduced in January we again reduced our face to face service delivery. We are now once again increasing the delivery of face to face services as appropriate.

Compared with the first set of national restrictions imposed last spring, Probation is now in a much stronger position to supervise offenders effectively during the pandemic. Developments like asymptomatic Covid testing of staff and people on probation, regular risk assessments of staff with vulnerabilities, Covid-secure offices, social distancing, and use of personal protective equipment are allowing us to continue to deliver probation services even within heightened restrictions, while ensuring staff and service users remain safe.

The development of new approaches such as blended supervision (a mixture of face to face and remote contact), Alternative Delivery Models for Accredited Programmes, and innovative ways of delivering unpaid work in Covid safe ways have also significantly increased our ability to deliver during the pandemic.

HM Inspectorate of Probation published a thematic review of Exceptional Delivery Model arrangements in November 2020 and of Probation Recovery in February 2021. Both reports praised our response to the pandemic.