Community Rehabilitation Companies

(asked on 29th September 2020) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service Annual Report and Accounts 2019–20, published on 24 September 2020, what assessment he has made of the reasons for worsening performance across the following key performance indicators for Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRC) (a) CRC completion of accredited programmes, (b) CRC sentence plan timeliness, and (c) and CRC initial contact; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 7th October 2020

National performance met or exceeded targets for four out of the 18 Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) measures in the most recently released figures. CRC contracts continue to be managed throughout COVID and the contract exit period. Where performance issues arise, these are managed by the relevant contract management teams and contractual levers applied, for example service credits or performance improvement plans.

As a result of the COVID pandemic all CRCs have been operating under the obligations within their Exceptional Delivery Models (EDM). This has meant that CRCs have had to adapt to an alternative way of working. The EDMs are subject to robust assurance and compliance activities, which are carried out by the Authority on a regular basis to ensure that CRCs continue to operate to their contracted obligations and continue to deliver front line probation services to protect the public.

There was minimal impact from COVID-19 on performance for Q4 (1st January – 31st March) 2020. However, there may be small localised effects due to government regulations introduced in the week commencing 23rd of March 2020 which saw some normal probation operations temporarily suspended, group-sizes reduced, or CRCs operating by alternative practices that may not be fully reflected in performance reporting.

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