APPENDIX 1
Letter from Professor Rod Morgan, HM Chief
Inspector of Probation
When I, together with HMIP colleagues, gave
evidence to the HAC on 11 February, HAC Members requested, and
we agreed, to provide a note regarding the relationship between
the Probation Service's workload and budget in recent years.
The relationship is, as you will appreciate,
complicated. The demands made on the Service have greatly changed,
as has the quality of what has been provided. However, as the
attached note indicates, the Service has by any standards delivered
a great deal more for proportionately fewer resources. In the
next year or so, I hope that as a result of work that the NPD
are developing, it will be possible to generate a much more precise
fix on the relationship between workload and budget than is currently
possible.
May 2003
Attachment
HMIP undertook to provide a note subsequent
to the hearing on the extent to which expenditure on the probation
service had increased in line with probation caseload in the last
10 years.
Information is given in the following table,
which shows total expenditure in both cash and real terms, and
total caseload for the period 1991-92 to 2001-02, the most recent
year for which caseload data are available.
| Total expenditure on the
probation service (cash
terms)
| Total expenditure on the
probation service (real
terms)
| Total caseload of
probation (number of
offenders supervised as
at end-December)
|
| 1991-92 | 334.3 | 428.2
| 136,400 |
| 1992-93 | 364.7 | 455.4
| 136,600 |
| 1993-94 | 392.8 | 480.7
| 145,000 |
| 1994-95 | 409.1 | 495.3
| 158,300 |
| 1995-96 | 405.3 | 479.1
| 160,800 |
| 1996-97 | 437.2 | 503.0
| 170,300 |
| 1997-98 | 428.1 | 479.3
| 184,300 |
| 1998-99 | 432.7 | 472.4
| 203,500 |
| 1999-00 | 456.7 | 487.6
| 204,000 |
| 2000-01 | 479.1 | 503.1
| 204,600 |
| 2001-02 | 523.0 | 536.1
| 207,400 |
Increase over
period 1991-92 to
2001-02
| |
25% |
52%
|
As indicated, over the period as a whole, the increase in
expenditure (25% in real terms) has not kept pace with the increase
in caseload (52%). Also, this latter figure may understate the
increase in work since, as we indicated in our evidence, the work
involved in an individual case has typically increased as a result
of changes in probation service work over this period—particularly
the development of national standards for contact with offenders
and of accredited programmes. It is not though possible to quantify
this increase. The National Probation Directorate are developing
measures of the workload currently involved in a case.
|
