The chief probation officer for England and Wales says the service was facing “significant” challenges when it was dealing with violent offender Damien Bendall, who went on to kill four people, but says major changes continue to be made to prevent a similar “tragic” incident from happening again.
Kim Thornden-Edwards, who has been in post since February, told inquests into the deaths of Bendall’s victims – his pregnant partner Terri Harris, 35, and her children, 13-year-old John Paul Bennett and 11-year-old Lacey Bennett, as well as Lacey’s friend Connie Gent, 11 – that she accepted the findings of a damning independent report on the probation service “without reservation”.
Chief inspector of probation Justin Russell said in the report, published in January, that the Probation Service’s handling of Bendall, 33, was of an “unacceptable standard” at every stage and “critical opportunities” to correct errors were missed before he murdered his victims in September 2021.
The inquests had previously heard from members of staff at the Probation Service based in both Swindon and Chesterfield, which both dealt with Bendall in relation to previous offences, who said they struggled with high workloads and stress.
Another inexperienced probation officer previously told the inquests she had only been in her post for around five months before she was incorrectly allocated Bendall’s case.
Speaking on day eight of the inquests at Chesterfield Coroner’s Court on Wednesday, Ms Thornden-Edwards said they had recruited at “record levels” to try and address staffing issues.
She explained how, in June 2021, a new model for probation services was brought in, largely reversing controversial changes that had been made in 2014 which divided the probation service in two, but that this was a “considerable organisational challenge”.
She said: “The changes were huge, we were bringing together two separate organisations. Staff were anxious about the changes, it became a very anxious time for probation and there was considerable strain on the system.
“We restarted with a significant number of staff vacancies that were very difficult to fill quickly. The other element that compounded this is that it occurred during the pandemic. It was a very difficult time, a unique time in probation history.
“I wouldn’t want to say there wasn’t enormous amounts of preparation but even with all the planning, it was a huge change at a difficult time for the country.”
Ms Thornden-Edwards said they were “starting to see the benefits” after recruiting new staff members.
She said: “We have seen in the last six months a real change and we’re net increasing in our staffing month on month and retention rates are improving.
“It means you have more new staff, it’s a by-product of growing at such a pace, but we certainly still have the majority of our staff in the five-years-plus period of service.”
The independent report also highlighted how “vital information about the serious risks” posed by Bendall to those he lived with and the public was not included in the Probation Service’s report to a judge when he was sentenced for an arson offence in June 2021.
As a result, he was sentenced to an “entirely inappropriate curfew condition to reside with Ms Harris and her children”.
Addressing this, Ms Thornden-Edwards said it was likely a judge would have listened if the Probation Service had said that a curfew would not be suitable.
She said: “We would not have recommended a curfew. It is likely the courts would follow our recommendations.
“Not always, but generally they do heed the advice or recommendations of the Probation Service. If we were able to say we had concerns about a high-risk offender with some domestic abuse history being curfewed to a family home, I believe the courts would have been minded to listen.”
She added that the “fundamental error” in the Probation Service’s dealing with Bendall “was the wrong classification of risk (he posed) which was built on a lack of information available that should have been sought”.
She said: “It was not appropriate when you look at Bendall’s history, to have allocated him to an inexperienced member of staff without the right support.
“There were opportunities during the course of what happened to reassess his risk and unfortunately that didn’t happen.
“There was significant disruption at the time, there were significant staffing gaps and many teams were struggling to manage the level of vacancies they had and oversee the level of work acceptably.
“I accept that the workloads were high and there was disruption within the team. I’m not here to dispute the fact that caseloads were too high and vacancies were too high.
“I’m not here to dispute any of the findings of the report.”
When asked by senior coroner Peter Nieto whether changes had been made since the report was published, she said the service was on a drive to “raise standards”.
She said efforts had been made to improve domestic abuse and child safeguarding enquiries after the report concluded that they needed to be carried out on “everyone sentenced so that accurate risk assessments can be made and safe proposals are made in court reports”.
She said a new “gatekeeping” form – essentially a checklist – needed to be filled out and checked by a senior manager and that this was being used in a number of cases although not all.
She said: “It’s a way to ensure all the checks are being done. That is our commitment to it.
“We want to make sure we are driving the right behaviours, if and when we are content we don’t need to do that anymore, we will look at that.
“It is one part of a drive to make sure we raise standards, that we have clear expectations, and we’re doing that in many ways – it is one part of a package.
“It gives us assurance that the checks are being made.”
She also explained how new templates had been sent to all local authorities regarding child safeguarding to provide them with the information they required, but she said they had had some “pushback” from some children’s services departments because of the level of information they required from them.
She said: “The importance of exchanging information is stressed very clearly.
“Some say it is a huge volume and they struggle with it. We have had similar negotiations with police over the domestic abuse enquiries we make.
“We have dedicated staff who have access to police information and they will be able to do the checks in collaboration with the police because we need to ensure we get the right information within the timescales.
“We have invested significantly in numbers of staff since this tragic incident to do this. We are trying to demonstrate our commitment to making changes.”
She also explained how training of new probation officers had been changed so they did not manage offenders until the appropriate training had been given.
She said: “You sometimes have to wait a bit of time for the training so people were allocated cases with wraparound support.
“I didn’t think it was wise action for us to be taking, so that is a change we have made.”
Ms Thornden-Edwards added that another recommendation they had taken on board was encouraging staff to be more “professionally curious”, with prompts on the system to alert probation officers to ask more questions and not take what an offender was saying on “face value” – something that happened in Bendall’s case.
The inquests will continue on Thursday.
