Howard Lockwood: "This is a serious piece of legislation and needs serious money"

The Association of Chief Probation Officers has written to all MPs in England and Wales saying many measures in the government's Crime and Disorder Bill will not work without extra resources.

The budget cuts will mean 500 redundancies this year and a similar number in 1999. They come at a time when the probation service believes it will need hundreds of extra staff to fulfill its new obligations.

Under new provisions, criminals convicted of sexual and violent offences can be supervised after release from jail for up to 10 years longer than is possible at present.

The Bill, due to become law in the summer, also gives probation officers the job of monitoring released offenders wearing electronic tags.

In the letter to MPs, the association chairman Howard Lockwood says a total of 10% of staff, or 1,500 officers, have been made redundant over the past three years.

"We have managed to make savings by taking out management posts and support staff," he said in a BBC interview. "But now we are going to lose front-line staff."

Mr Lockwood described the new Bill as a "serious piece of legislation that needs serious money".

Extra £30m

While upbeat about the government's intentions, he said the probation service would need an extra £30m to act on them.

The association pointed out that even if new staff were recruited to take on the extra supervision work, they would not be as effective as officers currently leaving the service.

The letter says: "Taking into account the fact that redundancy notices are currently being handed out to experienced staff, and the interruption in training arrangements leaving the service without trained recruits until 2000, this part of the Bill alone looks unachievable."

Home Office response

The warning comes a day after the Audit Commission said most criminal justice agencies had to do "an awful lot of work" to prepare for the parts of the Bill aimed at tackling youth crime.