Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 30 June 2022 to Question 25870 on Community Orders, how many community payback projects have been nominated by members of the public in each (a) local authority area and (b) probation service area in each of the last five years.

It is vital that the work offenders undertake as part of their Community Payback benefits local people and places.

As such, we actively encourage members of the public to nominate Community Payback projects via the Gov.uk website.

In response to PQ 25868 we provided a breakdown of all nominations received via the Gov.uk page under both CRCs and the unified Probation Service since September 2019.

Prior to unification of the Probation Service in June 2021, Community Payback was delivered by Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) who had their own processes for capturing public nominations. CRC contracts did not require them to report on these processes. However, under CRCs the public could also nominate projects via the Gov.uk website and we provided this data in response to PQ 25868, dating back to September 2019. There is no data prior to September 2019.

The Gov.uk process operates at a regional level and does not allow us to map nominations on to local authority or Probation Delivery Unit areas.

Local Community Payback teams work closely with local authorities, Community Safety Partnerships and Police and Crime Commissioners to identify and deliver constructive projects that respond to the needs of communities.

We are working to improve our data collection post-unification as part of wider reforms to Community Payback.