A few days ago in Parliament there were a couple of published questions from Simon Fell who is the Conservative MP for Barrow and Furness and his questions were responded by Edward Argar who is a Minister and he referred to HMPPS which is presumably the “His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service” and he then refers to a few places which includes “Kent, Surrey and Sussex” The questions can be obtained from here if anyone wants to raise a Yes or No.

Simon Fell: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice:

what performance measures his Department uses to measure the success of transitional accommodation for prison leavers.

whether his Department collects information on how many people who leave prison for transitional accommodation leave with settled accommodation.

Edward Argar: Prison leavers without settled accommodation are almost 50 per cent more likely to re-offend compared with those with settled accommodation: a settled place to live is a key factor in reducing re-offending, cutting crime and protecting the public.

The data collected on people leaving prison for transitional accommodation, together with data on settled accommodation three months after release, can be found at the following link: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64c10b4e90b54500143e8375/Probation_Performance_Data_Tables_2022-23.xlsx.

HMPPS Community Accommodation Service (CAS) currently provides transitional accommodation via three tiers of support, each focused on a different cohort. CAS1 (Approved Premises) is used as a public protection resource to accommodate higher-risk offenders. CAS2 provides accommodation for medium-risk defendants on bail and prisoners eligible for release under home detention curfew. CAS3 is our ground-breaking new temporary accommodation service.

HMPPS launched CAS3 in July 2021, providing up to 12 weeks’ guaranteed accommodation on release for those leaving prison at risk of homelessness, with support to move on to settled accommodation. Initially implemented in five probation regions (Yorkshire and the Humber; North West; Greater Manchester; East of England; and Kent, Surrey and Sussex), the service was rolled out to Wales in June 2022. From April 2023, the CAS3 service was operating in all probation regions in England and Wales.

Between 2019-20 and 2022-23, the proportion of prison leavers who were homeless upon release decreased by five percentage points, from 16 per cent to 11 per cent.

By January 2023, the proportion of offenders housed on the first night of release from custody was 7.6 percentage points higher in CAS3 regions in comparison with regions where CAS3 had yet to be implemented.