Prisons have poor performance data

Thursday, November 05, 2009

The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) does not have the performance and expenditure data it needs to assess maintenance performance in prisons, a report has found.

Prisons are supposed to produce performance data through the NOMS Service Delivery Agreement framework. But the Public Accounts Committee's (PAC) report found that only half the data asked for the by the National Audit Office (NAO) was provided.

"NOMS should ensure that the data necessary for effective management is produced by staff when required and on a consistent basis across the service," the report said.

The agency's analysis of data also came under fire from the committee. It found that NOMS does not analyse, either at area level or centrally, the performance and cost data relating to its estates in order to gain an overall view of organisational performance.

In light of this, the report said NOMS should collate all performance and cost data and use it to analyse performance across the prison estate, with the aim of driving up performance, reducing costs and identifying and disseminating best practice.

Richard Bacon, a member of the committee, said it was worrying that NOMS does not have the data it needs to ensure that the prison estate is being maintained properly.

He said: "NOMS isn't collecting or analysing data on how well prisons carry out maintenance work and the scant information that NOMS does have fails to reflect day-to-day reality. For example, maintenance staff say that around half of their daily workload is created by prisoner vandalism yet according to NOMS' own Incident Reporting System vandalism only accounts for 0.5 per cent of repairs. Also, NOMS' key performance target for maintenance is worthless because incomplete maintenance work is excluded, automatically giving a 100 per cent score every time.

"To run any large organisation you need sound management information. Without this, you cannot make sensible decisions over priorities. NOMS needs to get its act together and ensure that its collection and management of maintenance data is up to scratch."