Casework

Reviews

For the third year running there were two main themes: the first being the continued decline of paper-based determinate DCR cases, while the second is the continued substantial rise in demand for oral hearings almost entirely fuelled by the IPP cases. Unfortunately, each oral hearing requires substantially more resource than does a paper based DCR case.

There was an 82% increase in the number of three member IPP oral hearings from 556 in 2008/09 to 1,022 this year. There was a small fall in the number of three member lifer cases from 1,272 to 1,170.

Meanwhile DCR cases fell by 38% from 2,893 to 1,792 cases. Paper EPP cases fell by 69% from 981 to 302 cases.

Recalls

The number of determinate paper recall cases passed to the Board by the Secretary of State reduced from 17,184 to 13,423 cases. However, applications for Smith and West hearings rose 47% from 1,086 to 1,598. This was the fourth year of significant rises in demand for Smith and West hearings, although thanks to thorough sifting being applied to the applications, the number of single member oral hearings declined by 21% from 422 to 348. ESP oral and paper hearings also had a rise for the fourth successive year from 462 to 662 cases.

Deferrals, the backlog and intensive case management

Encouragingly, deferrals and adjournments on the day reduced by 2% (to 17%) over the previous year. Nonetheless, the number of outstanding review cases requiring an oral hearing continued to rise, reaching 2,500, a rise of 656 cases on the backlog in 2008/09. The continued unmet need for additional judicial resources was responsible for this, despite fully trained independent chairs now chairing 60% of IPP hearings.

The situation could have been much worse had ICM members not rejected 28% of all applications for an oral hearing after appeal (following the Parole Board Rules which came into being on the 1st April 2009). ICM members assessed 2,972 cases in 2009/10. The long standing backlog in pre-tariff cases had been cleared almost entirely by the end of March 2010 with 941 cases being reviewed throughout the year.

Structure of the operations teams, LEAN and the CMS

In order to allow for the increase in oral hearings and decrease in determinate workload, the Reviews Team was restructured during December and January. It now consists of four teams, one of which has absorbed the work of the former, separate, DCR team. Meanwhile, on the Recalls side, the Representations for Re-release Team has just completed a project utilising Lean techniques to review its ESP processes and it is envisaged that this approach will be applied to all operational teams during 2010/11.

The year also saw a substantial amount of resource being applied to the creation and development of the new Casework Management System to replace the Board's existing fragmented and fragile systems. The work has proceeded almost to schedule rare for large-scale IT projects in the justice system - and went live in May 2010.

The Parole Board for England and Wales

Grenadier House, 99-105 Horseferry Road, London, SW1P 2DX

Telephone 0845 251 2220