ilawrence@napo.org.uk's blog

Over the next few weeks I expect there will be significant activity around pay discussions and the response by the Government to the Justice Select Committee report into Transforming Rehabilitation. I intend to bring you news of developments on both fronts as soon as I can, and members would do well to look out for accurate and timely information via our regular mail outs to your preferred email addresses and our website and printed versions of Napo Magazine.

I have always believed that it’s a privilege to be employed by a trade union, and especially in the role as the senior elected employee of the organisation.

It remains to be seen whether Friday 22nd June 2018 will be remembered in future years by those members who have suffered the impact of Transforming Rehabilitation as ‘Vindication Day’. A day which saw the publication of probably the most damning report of its kind by a parliamentary select committee into what is undoubtedly the most ill-conceived social experiment that I have ever seen.

A number of members have been in touch to ask about progress on the OMiC Review, expressing concerns about safety and the impact on work in the community. We have recently put together a comprehensive update following on from our analysis in March, and the full document can be seen here.

OMiC - Napo's View

Last week’s meeting of your National Executive Committee included a number of important agenda items, one of which was to receive a report from our Pay negotiators on where HMPPS had got to in respect of the pay remit that we had been told was with HM Treasury for clearance. I am working with the Comms team here to see how we can capture some of the key decisions and get these out to members.

Appreciation to those Napo members who took part in activities across Probation recently to remind Senior HMPPS management that we have pretty much reached the end of our tether as to whether or not we will get Ministerial approval to start pay negotiations. As I said in the lead up to the day of protest, Napo and Unison submitted our joint pay claim to all employers on the 18th May.

Joint Pay Claim

I am blogging today from De Montfort University in Leicester where the Probation Institute Trainees Conference (the first for QIP 2 and 2a Trainees in NPS and CRCs) has just finished. I was speaking at the conference along with NPS Executive director Sonia Crozier, and took the opportunity to set out Napo’s prespective of the post-TR landscape as well as to outline our view on the future direction of probation.

Saturday’s TUC march saw a number of trade union members and those from political parties and community groups join up in Central London.

I was proud to take part alongside Napo members, many of whom had travelled considerable distances to support the event. I was not alone in having reservations about the TUC selecting a date for such a huge enterprise so soon after the local elections, which had no doubt seen many political activists working hard in their neighbourhoods in the weeks before.

May Day is as good a time as any to dream a little. So imagine if you will a Probation landscape devoid of Community Rehabilitation Companies. One restored to public ownership as part of a Rehabilitation Counter-Revolution as politicians from all parties are left with no choice but to roundly condemn Grayling’s follies which transformed a once gold-standard service into two dysfunctional entities far removed from their former selves and where quality and professionalism are all too often the exception rather than the rule.

Following my earlier reports on pay over the last few weeks Napo, UNISON (and we hope the GMB) are organising a Day of Protest for members in the NPS and CRCs to show their anger and dismay at the way that probation workers have been treated over the 2017/18 Pay farce and the delays in negotiations over longer term pay reform from 2018 onwards.