London Probation Trust Community Council

This is an amazing and unique opportunity for users of probation services to have their voices heard.

London Probation Trust (LPT) has commissioned User Voice to develop community councils in four London boroughs:

Greenwich
Haringey
Kingston & Richmond
Tower Hamlets

This is part of LPT’s Offender Engagement Project (OEP), an initiative to improve the quality and effectiveness of one-to-one work with offenders and reduce re-offending. The OEP is piloting a number of approaches in order to develop a mechanism for consistently gaining service user input into their service delivery and policy.

Phase 1 (completed)

A consultation was run by User Voice between February and April 2011:

User-led survey of 560 service users;
118 of them took part in 13 discussion groups;
An Open Space event in May 2011 was facilitated by ex-offenders and attended by 11 service users, nominated by their peers in the focus groups, and 13 senior probation staff.

The purpose was to canvas interest amongst service users and identify some of those who could go forward to pilot the council model in the next phase.

Phase 2 (ongoing)

User Voice has set up a community council in each of the 4 London boroughs. The councils are based on the model we have already successfully delivered in several prisons.

The councils provide an opportunity for service users to voice the concerns and ideas of the wider service user community in a solution focused way.

Council meetings commenced at the end of January 2012 and are continuing to be held every 4 – 6 weeks.

The councils were made up of issue-based groups that were elected by service users and staff via a democratic process involving questionnaires and focus groups. All candidates underwent training delivered by User Voice to support this process.

Elections took place between 12 and 19 December 2011.

The Results

For a full breakdown of the results please click here.

Phase 3 (started April 2012)

Following the successful community council pilots, User Voice is continuing to work with LPT.

We are currently recruiting further council members in each of the four original boroughs of Greenwich, Haringey, Kingston & Richmond and Tower Hamlets.

We are also rolling out community council models across more London boroughs. These boroughs have been clustered together in the following areas:

North West – Harrow and Ealing

West – Wandsworth, Hounslow and Hammersmith and Fulham

North – Barnet and Enfield and Camden and Islington

South Central – Lambeth and Southwark

East – Waltham Forest and Redbridge and Newham

South East – Bexley and Bromley and Croydon

The West and North West councils had their first meetings in October 2012 and are currently discussing issues such as having Probation employ service users.

The North and South Central councils had their first meetings in January 2013.

We are currently recruiting in the East and South East areas listed above.

If you are on probation in any of these boroughs, and would like to have your say about the services provided, get in touch!

Email info@uservoice.org OR call us on 020 3137 7471.