A probation services provider covering Dorset has gone into administration after what union bosses called a “disastrous privatisation programme” under former justice secretary Chris Grayling.

The collapse of Working Links, which owns three Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) delivering probation services in Dorset and across the south west should be a “wake-up call” for the Government, unions said.

GMB, the union for probation workers, added that private companies’ involvement in the sector was an “expensive waste”.

And Unison, the UK’s largest union, called it “yet another catastrophe to be added to Chris Grayling’s growing record of failure”.

Under Mr Grayling, ministers overhauled the arrangements for managing offenders in 2014 in a partial privatisation known as Transforming Rehabilitation.

The National Probation Service was created to deal with high-risk cases, while remaining work was assigned to 21 CRCs.

Unison national officer for police and justice Ben Priestley said: “He was repeatedly warned when justice secretary that privatisation would fail. The collapse of these contracts is proof.

“Despite the chaos, the Ministry of Justice is still planning to award more probation contracts to private firms.”

And Justice Secretary David Gauke said Dame Glenys Stacey’s report was “damning”.

The Ministry of Justice has ordered Working Links, to hand control of the company to private firm Seetec with immediate effect.

The urgent government response follows a “deeply troubling” report released by Dame Glenys Stacey, HM Chief Inspector of Probation.

In the report, Dame Glenys says the DDC CRC “is not delivering probation services to anywhere near the standards we and the public expect.”

She called for urgent action following the report from the November 2018 inspection, which saw the service rated as ‘inadequate’, the lowest rating. Inspectors found staff were under-recording the number of riskier cases due to commercial pressures, and were completing individuals’ sentence plans to meet performance targets without actually meeting the offender.

The report states: “Staff in DDC CRC are trapped in a spiral of decline. The imperative to meet task-related contractual performance targets and so avoid service credits dominates working life.

“There is a high staff turnover, and professional staff numbers are reducing.”

The inspection found that assessment work in Dorset and Devon was “insufficient in too many cases,”, with only 33 per cent of the cases in Dorset drawn “sufficiently from available sources of information”. Some officers had on average of between 80 to100 cases, with some caseloads reaching 168, which Dame Glenys called an “unmanageable workload.”

CRC staff had been cut by one-third since 2015 with one manager describing the pressure as “mind-blowing.”

The only element of the service rated as ‘good’ was the Through the Gate scheme, which provides personalised plans for the user’s resettlement needs.

Yesterday, Dame Glenys said: “This should be a turning point.

“Ministers recently took the decision to terminate all 21 CRC contracts early, next year. The Secretary of State is now considering what comes next. Our CRC inspection evidence shows a variable picture but it is one in which the provision of services in most cases is wanting, often significantly so.

“We find probation services delivered by the National Probation Service, for higher risk individuals, to be good, overall.

“It is not easy to change the model for delivery by CRCs of a complex service for over 154,000 medium and lower-risk offenders every year. But the future model must preserve the ethos of probation, and respect and nurture the probation profession itself.

“The alternative is made clear in the thoroughly dispiriting Dorset, Devon and Cornwall CRC report.”