ilawrence@napo.org.uk's blog

That track by the legendary rock band Queen as in: ‘another one bites the dust’ is especially apposite in terms of this week’s announcement of a new Secretary of State for Justice. The cabinet shuffle, or shambles depending on your point of view, saw the elevation of David Gauke to replace David Lidington and take possession of what some might say is one of the two great ‘poisoned chalices’ (the other being Work and Pensions), becoming the fifth incumbent over a four year period.

Napo on his call list

The results of the Femicide Censusprovides a depressing narrative of the numbers of women (113 in 2016) who were killed by their partner or ex-partner. The report makes for shocking reading but is another addition to the litany of carnage that featured in previous reports indicating that over 900 women had died at the hands of men between 2009 and 2015.

I guess that very few people will be surprised to learn that the privatisation of part of the Approved Premises Waking Night Cover arrangements has hit on some problems. Napo has raised concerns with NPS project leads indicating that some members in scope for TUPE are reporting serious dissatisfaction at the lack of information they have been receiving about their future terms and conditions and whether Sodexo  (yes them again) and OCS have actually got their act together after being awarded the North and South contracts.

A packed house at the REFORM Think Tank event yesterday in Westminster, who hosted a keynote speech by the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor David Lidington.

It was of some concern to see the unwelcome developments around the intention of CAFCASS senior management to unilaterally impose further changes to the workload weighting scheme. The section negotiators were not originally consulted about these changes and quickly indicated that they certainly did not support them. I am reliably informed that they would have done nothing to improve the measure of workloads and appeared to be solely designed to shift staff from higher weighting bands to lower ones.

We have been reporting on the farcical engagement we have been having recently with senior NPS leaders on 2017 pay and we were visited at this week’s TU engagement meeting by Martin Beacroft  the HMPPS HR lead. Martin came to tell us that our conclusion that all of the 2017 NPS pay remit had not been spent was ‘well on the money’ so to speak.

It’s late on a Friday and I have still to do some work in advance of a full day’s business in Cornwall on Monday speaking with Napo members and meeting the local Police and Crime Commissioners.

I will shortly be issuing another statement to NPS members describing the shambolic state of affairs in relation to that generous zero pay offer from the NPS that I wrote out about in last week’s mail out.

The General Secretary has had news of a family bereavement and has had to leave duty early today.

Meanwhile Ian has asked that his speech to this Morning's Napo the Forum conference be published instead of his normal Blog posting.

GS Speech to Conference

Just when you thought the probation crisis had reached a nadir comes news that two CRC owners have decided to make further cuts to staffing in a desperate attempt they tell us to keep their front line operations afloat.

Another intensive and highly absorbing week, which included attendance at two high profile conferences where academics, practitioners, service users, politicians, inspectors and Napo provided a critique of the current situation in probation and what could be done to start dealing with the myriad problems that everyone, except Ministers and Michael Spurr, acknowledge are urgent and immediate.