Leicestershire probation service rated 'inadequate' by inspectors
The HM Inspectorate report said the PDU was one of the "largest" by overall caseload in England and Wales, with offices in Leicester, Coalville and Loughborough.
'Lack of liaison'
Mr Jones said: "Since the previous inspection in 2022 the PDU has faced ongoing challenges including high staff turnover, elevated sickness rates and, like all PDUs and regions, a prolonged period of significant and frequent changes linked to early prison releases."Only in the past six months has there been a noticeable shift towards improvement."The inspection found the leadership team at the PDU was "well-respected" and staff across all grades said they felt able to provide feedback to senior managers.However, according to the report there was "a lack of professional curiosity" with practitioners not responding to new information when they received it as well as a "lack of liaison" with other agencies.The inspection also found in 24% of cases where child safeguarding information should have been requested it had not been, and in 15% of cases no request had been made for domestic abuse information when it should have been.The report made six recommendations to the PDU, including to improve the quality of work to assess and review risk of harm, and to develop practitioners' confidence and skills in the use of professional curiosity.The Ministry of Justice, which has overall control of the probation service, said the government is "on track" to recruit 2,300 more probation officers nationally by March next year.A spokesperson said: "This will help ensure offenders receive robust supervision and improve the work probation does to keep the public safe."
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The Independent
7 minutes ago
- The Independent
UK-wide strategy needed to tackle pensioner poverty, says committee
A national strategy to tackle pensioner poverty is needed, according to MPs. The Government should also decide on – and ensure – a minimum level of retirement income, the Work and Pensions Committee urged. Once set, a plan should be created for everyone to reach that level, it added. Given that the state pension is the core of the Government's offer to pensioners, a guiding principle should be that it provides the amount needed for a 'minimum, dignified, socially acceptable standard of living', the committee said. It urged the Government to commit to a UK-wide, cross-government strategy for an ageing society, that it said would help target support to tackle pensioner poverty. If it does not effectively tackle poverty as one of the causes of ill-health, 'the Government will not be able to achieve its goal of building a health and social care service that is sustainable', the Pensioner Poverty report warned. The report also highlighted longer-term trends that 'threaten to undermine pension adequacy', such as people renting into later life. The committee also called for a pension credit take-up strategy for England by the end of 2025. Despite being worth up to £4,000 a year, the take-up of pension credit has hovered between 61% and 66% for a decade, with an estimated 700,000 households being eligible but not claiming, the committee said. A taper to pension credit should also be considered to 'mitigate the cliff-edge effect' for those who currently miss out, the report said. Under current rules, some pensioners just above income thresholds could end up worse off than those with slightly lower incomes, it added. Pension credit can 'passport' recipients to other benefits such as housing benefit, council tax support, the warm homes discount, a free TV licence, help with dental treatment and, in winter 2024/25, the winter fuel payment. The committee argued that reliance on top-ups such as pension credit and housing benefit is not sufficient to ensure people do not fall below the poverty line. The report said: 'After a decline in pensioner poverty in the 2000s, the number of pensioners in relative low income started to rise again from 2010. This has been exacerbated by increases in the cost of living since 2021.' It continued: 'The number of people of pension age living in relative poverty (below 60% of median income) is 1.9 million or 16% of pensioners. 'Measures which factor in the cost of living show that between 2008/09 and 2022/23, the number of pensioners in households below the Minimum Income Standard (MIS)—the amount needed for a minimum dignified socially acceptable standard of living—rose from 1.5 to 2.8 million. 'The proportion of pensioners below 75% of MIS (where the risk of material deprivation increases substantially) rose from 5.9% in 2021/22 to 9.5% in 2022/23. 'In practice, this means cutting back on essentials, like food, energy use and seeing friends, in an attempt to manage costs. Health experts explained the implications for health. Financial hardship can accelerate the ageing process, making it more likely that an older person will enter hospital or need care.' The committee said that in some places, organisations are working together towards shared objectives. The report continued: 'However, not all areas do this. We heard that it would help to have a national cross-government strategy for our ageing society and older people. 'This could provide a framework to hold the different partners to account for their role in delivering the agreed outcomes. It could also ensure that central government departments developed policy with shared objectives in mind.' Committee chairwoman Debbie Abrahams said: 'To boost incomes, the Government needs to come up with a strategy to increase pension credit take-up. It's a scandal that so many have missed out for so many years, often through an aversion to claiming benefits altogether, or lack of support. 'The fairness of the pensions credit eligibility criteria where if you are a penny above the threshold, you miss out on thousands of pounds, also needs to be looked at. 'Ultimately, the Government should decide what it thinks is enough for a dignified retirement, and then work to ensure that all pensioners are on at least that level. 'Faced with a combination of high energy costs, ill-health and ever higher rates of pensioners in more costly privately rented accommodation, tackling pensioner poverty is not simply a DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) issue. So, we're calling for a nationwide, cross-government strategy for an ageing society that should be rooted in equity and wellbeing.' On Tuesday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said that a review into raising the state pension age is needed to ensure the system is 'sustainable and affordable'. The Government review is due to report in March 2029 and Ms Reeves said it was 'right' to look at the age at which people can receive the state pension as life expectancy increases. The state pension age is currently 66, rising to 67 by 2028 and the Government is legally required to periodically review the age. A Government spokesperson said: 'Supporting pensioners is a top priority, and thanks to our commitment to the triple lock, millions will see their yearly state pension rise by up to £1,900 by the end of this parliament. 'We have also run the biggest-ever campaign to boost pension credit take-up, with nearly 60,000 extra pensioner households being awarded the benefit, worth on average around £4,300 a year. 'But we know there is a real risk that tomorrow's pensioners will be poorer than today's, which is why we are reviving the Pension Commission, to tackle the barriers that stop too many people from saving.' Emma Douglas, wealth policy director at Aviva, said: 'The pensions industry – alongside a revitalised Pensions Commission – has a critical role to play in helping people save for retirement and then turn their hard-earned pension pots into lasting financial security. 'With many people likely to manage their money well into their 90s, we must ensure those savings work harder and stretch further – especially as later life can bring complex challenges like cognitive decline.' She said that Aviva and Age UK were exploring a 'mid-retirement MOT' to help give people tools, guidance, and confidence to stay financially resilient throughout retirement. Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said: 'We warmly welcome this thoughtful and wide-ranging select committee report, which comes closer to providing a thorough and progressive strategic overview of the issues facing older people on low incomes and proposing workable solutions than anything successive governments have produced in recent years. 'When the Government announced the launch of the Pensions Commission earlier this week, ministers made it clear that its task is to think about the creation of a better system for future pensioners. 'This is necessary and important, but this committee report reinforces the point that there's work to do to improve the situation of today's pensioners on low incomes as well.'
The Guardian
8 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Neolithic long cairn in Yorkshire given extra protection after walkers remove stones
A rare and remarkable 5,000-year-old monument that is an example of one of the earliest visible structures in England is to receive extra protection because walkers, sometimes innocently, have been removing and moving stones. The Dudderhouse Hill long cairn in the Yorkshire Dales has been granted 'scheduled monument' status by the government, making it a site of national importance with greater legal protection. The long cairn is remarkable in many ways and helps us understand the lives, deaths and beliefs of the first farming communities, said Paul Jeffery, the national listings manager at Historic England, which has advised the government. 'This time was the beginning of everything.' To the untrained eye Dudderhouse Hill may look like a large pile of stones in the middle of nowhere and that helps explain the often unintentional damage, said Jeffery. The long cairn, near the village of Austwick in North Yorkshire, dates from about 3,400-2,400BC and is one of the oldest visible reminders of our prehistoric past. It is thought to be one of the first structures communally constructed by humans. Jeffery said: 'The fact it has survived at all demonstrates how well constructed it was and how monumental in the landscape back in its time.' The long cairn, which was built by a Neolithic farming community who were the successors to hunter-gatherers and lived in caves and stone huts, may have had a number of purposes. One of those was funerary, as a 'home for the dead', although not for whole bodies. Evidence suggests the deceased were left to the birds and elements before body parts were ritualistically interred in the monument. Long cairns may also have been positioned, like Stonehenge, to help communities know when seasons started and ended. Another function of the long cairn was to say 'this is our land', said Jeffery. 'Building a structure like that would have taken a lot of people a significant amount of time. They would have had to be fed by others, there would have been specialist stonemasons and engineers – a lot of effort would have been invested into those structures. They are a statement of 'this is us', 'we are here'.' Research suggests the long cairn was used as an animal pen in the 16th century and in more recent years has been damaged by people removing and moving stones, sometimes innocently to create way markers for walkers. 'The problem is this causes sustained and considerable damage over time,' said Jeffery. 'People might only be taking one stone and don't realise the harm they're doing. If it was left unchecked, eventually the evidence for its existence would be lost completely.' Scheduled monument status means the long cairn will receive the highest level of protection available and means the national park authority can carry out a project to educate people about the site's importance. Duncan Wilson, the chief executive of Historic England, said: 'Scheduling this remarkable neolithic long cairn ensures that this rare and fragile piece of our prehistoric heritage receives the protection it deserves.'
The Sun
8 minutes ago
- The Sun
Fury as over 6,000 migrants use pre-paid cards loaded with £50 a week funded by YOU at betting shops & casinos
OVER 6,000 migrants have used government-issued cards loaded with £50 a week at betting shops and casinos. Pre-paid cards given out to pay for basics including food and clothing were used in gambling venues, Home Office data reveals. 1 In the last year, up to 6,637 asylum seekers have used taxpayer handouts to fund their gambling habits. At the highest incidence, 227 asylum seekers attempted to use or successfully used the cards to gamble in a week last November. While attempts to gamble online using the cards had been made, they were blocked each time so they were forced to use them in physical sites. There are currently around 80,000 ASPEN card users in the UK. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told PoliticsHome: 'It is shocking that over 6,000 illegal immigrants have attempted to use hard-working British taxpayers' money to gamble. "They have illegally entered this country without needing to – France is safe, and no one needs to flee from there. 'The British taxpayer has put them up in hotels, and now they slap us in the face by using the money they are given to fund gambling. 'These illegal immigrants clearly don't need the money they are given if they are squandering it at casinos and arcades.'
