30 October 2014

Napo is launching a judicial review into the privatisation of probation services in England in Wales. The union says the move will put the safety of staff and the public at risk.

The news comes after the government has revealed that two companies, Sodexo and Interserve are to control over half of the probation services.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said, “We should be very worried that the government has not said that public safety will be a factor when assessing the bids. Even their own advisors have warned about the risk of putting inexperienced private companies in charge of supervising offenders. The government’s decision to ignore advice and press ahead regardless shows a complete determination to privatise public services whatever the cost.”

The probation service was split in two earlier this year in preparation for privatisation. The National Probation Service (NPS) will supervise 31,000 high risk ex-offenders, and the new Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRC) will supervise 200,000 low and medium risk offenders.



Sodexo and Interserve will run 11 of the 21 CRCs under contracts worth £450m. The contracts will come into effect next year, before the general election.

 Private security companies G4S and Serco withdrew their bids for the contracts after the Serious Fraud Office began an investigation into overcharging of more than £100m on electronic-tagging contracts.



Ian Lawrence, Napo’s general secretary, said: “It is purely ideological that Grayling is pressing ahead with his untried and untested so-called reforms to probation. We have mounting evidence that neither the CRCs nor the National Probation Service [are] stable at the moment and this is having a direct impact on the supervision of offenders and public safety. The fact so few organisations have won contracts also suggests that this has been a flawed competition with little or no real interest from providers in taking these contracts on.”