Written evidence from Blue Bay Support
Services (PB 35)
BACKGROUND
We are the directors of Blue Bay Support Services
(BBSS), a small company formed out of two existing companies,
which had been offering technical support to the Probation Service
and the Prison Service since 2003. These companies had developed
an expertise in providing high quality written assessments and
delivering rehabilitative interventions. Having operated a successful
private company within what is now the National Offender Management
Service, we consider ourselves well placed to offer some observations
around the issue of cost efficiency in this setting.
Our fundamental premise would be that as a small
(and uniquely innovative) company, we have encountered something
of a glass ceiling when we have attempted to work with the Services
operating in the Criminal Justice Sector. We consider that there
are structural barriers in place within this sector that actually
prohibit the promotion of cost-effectiveness.
We have seen Regional Offender Managers replaced
by Directors of Offender Management without discernible change
in how we have been approached as a small company. We have been
offering to deliver cost efficiency savings (of at least 25%)
for the last five years. Over this period, we have made written
submissions annually to all Chief Officers of Probation and all
Prison governors.
This has not been without accomplishment and we have
enjoyed various successful engagements. However, our business
model has been to offer an incremental approach to working with
the Probation and Prison Services. Our assumption was that if
quality, reliability and increased cost-effectiveness were demonstrated,
then the business model would succeed, as greater levels of engagement
would deliver greater cost-effectiveness. However, this is where
the glass ceiling has been encountered. While we have continuously
been bolstered by encouraging rhetoric, the Probation Services
and Prison Services appear to have no interest in actually exposing
themselves to competition.
If, for example, we are engaged by a Probation Trust
to deliver Pre-Sentence Reports to Courts and that Trust is not
delivering that service (due to workload management issues), who
are we to contact, if we believe we could offer a better service?
Our experience has been that despite a wealth of positive talk,
there has never been an adequate forum in which business arguments
could be advanced. Whether we have encountered a form of protectionism,
or simple "closed shop" practice, the impression offered
is that the Criminal Justice Sector, as it stands, is institutionally
anti-competitive.
Our view is that the pursuit of the macro management
of these big public organisations has diverted the necessary attention
that should have been given to their micro management. It is a
simple maxim in commercial practice that if an organisation minds
the pennies, the pounds will mind themselves. However, this argument
appears to have had little weight when we have attempted to promote
the service our company offers. The impression we have gained
(from making various representations to senior managers in the
Probation and Prison Services) has been of an enforced ignorance
(or disregard) of tangible financial benefit; or a dismissal of
the potential value of a small company's services.
EXAMPLE 1:
The provision of Pre-Sentence Reports (PSRs):
The average cost of a PSR (Standard Delivery) nationally
is £224 as disclosed in Probation Circular PC06 2009.
Our experience; however, suggests that a full-time salaried member
of staff (PSR writer) will prepare five reports a week for 40
weeks a year. This represents 200 reports at a cost of £250
per report.
Again based on our experience we have collated the
following information:
— A salaried
member of staff (Probation Officer grade) costs the Probation
Trust (with add on costs) around £50,000 a year.
— An
Employment Agency contracted staff member will cost a Probation
Trust (at very least) £1,200 per week.
— Using
Agency staff to prepare PSRs costs £240 per report.
— BBSS
offer a significant saving (37.5%) on agency staff.
— BBSS
offer PSRs at £150 per report—a 40% saving on the costs
incurred by Probation Trusts to complete this task.
EXAMPLE 2:
The provision of Parole Assessment Reports (PARs):
PARs and IPP reviews is a similar costing exercise
as PSRs. There is no nationally agreed figure for this, but experience
informs us that such a report takes a similar time as a PSR to
prepare.
— Salaried
staff seconded to prisons will prepare, therefore, a Parole Report
at a cost of £300.
— BBSS
will and have prepared these reports at a cost of £200 (a
saving of 33%).
EXAMPLE 3:
The provision of Structured Assessment of Risk
and Need (SARN) reports:
The SARN report format was developed in the prison
service to act as an evidence-based assessment of both progress
in treatment and future treatment needs. The final SARN Report
contains information that is gathered throughout the treatment
programme. It provides a summary of progress in treatment followed
by an indication of remaining treatment needs to be addressed
by offender managers.
This is a massive area of need. Prisons which have
a high proportion of sex offenders and therefore offer treatment
programmes, are struggling to prepare these reports within the
timescales set.
BBSS have a contract at a prison where we deliver
these reports at a cost of £1,350 per unit. Information received
from the commissioner is that this has offered a saving of 25%
on the service provided by the original supplier (a freelance
Psychologist).
EXAMPLE 4:
The provision of Offender Management Programmes:
Costings of such Offending Behaviour Programmes vary
according to the specific type of intervention.
On average it costs both prisons and probation trusts
£2,000 per completion.
BBSS are able to offer this intervention at a cost
of £1,500 per completion, a saving of 25%.
September 2010
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