Persistent staff shortages mean that probation staff have been working at a level that is unsustainable for years.26 At March 2025, there were 5,636 full-time equivalent probation officers in post, 79% of HMPPS’s target staffing level - a shortfall of 1,479 probation officers. HMPPS’s data shows that probation officers, at a national level, have been working on average at 118% capacity from January 2022 to April 2024. In some regions, for example, London and East of England, probation officers had to deal with even higher workloads - working on average at 126% capacity.27 In 2024, HMPPS found that it had significantly underestimated the number of staff it needed for its Probation Service and had been operating with around only half of the staff needed to run sentence management as intended. This means that HMPPS’s data on staff capacity will have been a significant underestimate of the actual pressure practitioners have been under.28