About us

Cumbria Probation Trust

‘Serving the Community’

Who are we?

Cumbria Probation Trust is a Criminal justice Agency serving the people of Cumbria.  It is one of the 35 probation trusts in England and Wales that along with prisons form the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and this service sits within the Ministry of Justice.

Cumbria Probation Trust employs 205 staff and these are made up of operational and support staff.  The service is split into 2 operational delivery units and these are both headed up by a Senior Manager.  Operational offices are located in Carlisle, Penrith, Kendal, Barrow and West Cumbria.

The Cumbria Probation Trust Board has overall responsibility for delivering both national and local agendas.  This undertaking is delivered by the staff team lead by the Chief Executive.

What do we do and how do we deliver this?

Cumbria Probation Trust (as with all probation trusts in the National Offender Management Service) charged with 5 key aims:

• Protection of the Public;
• Reduction of re-offending;       
• Proper punishment of offenders;
• Ensuring offenders awareness of the effects of crime on the victims of crime and the public;
• Rehabilitation of offenders.

These aims are to be worked towards whilst at the same time delivering the community sentence handed down to the offender by the court.  The Community Order resulted from the Criminal Justice Act (2003) which introduced this as the one standard order for use in the community.  The order contains one or more requirements and they are:

·         Unpaid work

·         Activity

·         Programme

·         Prohibited Activity

·         Curfew

·         Exclusion

·         Residence

·         Mental health treatment

·         Drug rehabilitation

·         Alcohol treatment

·         Supervision

·         Attendance Centre

Cumbria Probation Trust either working alone or with partners can deliver all of the 12 requirements.  More details of what each requirement does are shown in the ‘What is a Community Order?’ page of this pack. When specifying sentence the court must indicate why the sentence was handed down (e.g. punishment, rehabilitation etc)  The court will, in most cases, ask Cumbria Probation Trust to produce a Pre Sentence Report to inform the court what will work best.  The court does not have to follow the recommendations in the report.

The Pre Sentence Report results from an assessment undertaken on the Offender Assessment System (OASys).  The assessment is undertaken with the offender during an interview with the offender manager.

Once the sentence is handed down the offender management team will start the process of planning the delivery of the requirements as required by the court.  Delivery follows the ‘Offender Management Model’ and is designed to give a consistency of delivery to the offender, the courts and the community at large.

Who do we deliver with?

To deliver a more effective service Cumbria Probation Trust works with a number of partners.  We are a member of the Cumbria Criminal Justice Board and work alongside the police, courts etc to deliver the local agenda through working together. We also work very closely with the other four probation trustsin the North West Region.   We also have numerous partners with whom we work and these include:

CDRPS of which we are a key member

DAAT (including PCT and Social Services)

Local Authorities (including our work on LAA and with CCC Observatory)

Learning and Skills Council (LSC)

Supporting People (SP)

Cumbria colleges Ltd

Four colleges in Cumbria

The voluntary sector (this includes – Rathbones, Shelter, CASS, CROPT, Prospect, BTCV, Next Steps, NSPCC, Impact and Brathay)