Focus on our estates

Preparing estates for mixed case loads

The Estates team’s key areas of focus through 2021 and 2022 includes ensuring all Probation Contact Centres and Unpaid Work locations are safe and secure and enabling most of our offices to be suitable to deliver mixed caseloads. This work involves producing national standards, assessing all sites for mixed caseloads, obtaining the necessary funding and delivering the required works.

The team is also working on:

• Continuing to exit holdings through 2023 where it makes sense to do so, delivering a 22% reduction in our estate.
• Delivering £37.5m of capital projects and £5m of backlog maintenance
• Rolling out new permanent signage to existing and new sites
• Establishing the capacity of our unified estate to support our increased workforce ambition

Estates:  December 2021 national quarterly update

The Probation Reform Programme Estates workstream supports our Target Operating Model by providing a modern probation estate for England and Wales.

The Estates team is continuing to deliver upgrade projects in our 11 regions and Wales, creating buildings that offer a more positive environment;  support smarter, more flexible ways of working;  and deliver benefits to our communities.

The Estates team is supporting plans for the expansion of the delivery of mixed caseloads across each region by December 2022 through:  defining and agreeing security requirements at a national and regional level;  agreeing each region’s priority sites;  and delivering upgrade works.  It is expected that critical and high priority sites within regions will be fully compliant with mixed caseload security requirements by December 2022.

The Estates team is also working with the Unpaid Work team to support their operational delivery by baselining our estate for the delivery of Unpaid Work and preparing to help to deliver the Estates component of our future operating model.  The team is also assessing our building usage and capacity, to ensure our future Estates strategy and delivery supports wider organisational and recruitment planning.

If you are keen to discover more, please see the December 2021 Regional Team Briefing Estates Quarterly update and the Estates & Facilities Management pages on the Probation Hub.  Your Regional Probation Director, your manager and your regional Estates team will keep you informed about what our Estates strategy and delivery means at a local office, regional and national level.  If you have a question that can’t be answered by your regional team, please email:  ProbationReformEstatesPMO@justice.gov.uk.