In June, the new Police Crime Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act introduces some important changes to Electronic Monitoring (EM) for Adult Community sentences that I need to be aware of as I may be required to support parts of the process. Firstly, courts will now have the option to increase the length of the EM curfew from one, to two years and the maximum daily curfew hours from 16 to 20, whilst retaining a total weekly maximum of 112 hours.

Also, from the 28^th June, Practitioners managing People in Prison on Adult Community Sentences only, will have additional authority to vary EM curfew requirements without going back to court. They will have authority to vary when during the day curfew hours take place on an Order.

Unless it would interfere with an existing Residency Requirement (for example where a PoP is required to be a certain distance from a specific address), Practitioners can change and address without going back to court. The process is similar to the HD Variation process. My Practitioner will complete the safeguarding and Domestic Abuse checks, gain consent of the new address holder, and complete a NAT Internal Application to vary curfew for community sentences form (available on nDelius under the document section of the NSI). That will be triaged by my SPO and approved by my PDU Head. When approved, a Variation Notice (NAT Curfew variation notice for community sentences, also available on nDelius) will need to be sent to EMS, the court at which they were sentenced, and the police with EMS sending a confirmation notice and attending any new address before we inform the PoP and record the contact in nDelius. I may be asked to assist in some of this process.

This new process will save me time and support my PoP to better comply with their EM requirements which in turn, should mean they will better comply with their order.

The new rules will not be applied retrospectively, so are only available to PoPs sentenced on or after the 28^th June. This means that for a while, we will be managing two separate processes, till PoPs sentenced before that date have completed their curfewed hours.

To champion these changes, support learning and development and start to measure how EM is used across probation, my region will welcome an EM Lead (SPOC) who will help us implement and embed new processes, measure usage/collect data from probation and EPF (courts) to form a management information dashboard and drive innovation. All upcoming changes to EM will be captured and presented in a new EM Operational Framework available later in July. In the interim, a guide will be available to me and I can access the briefing on Wednesday 8 June at 11.30am.