Which probation office you end up with almost always comes down to one thing: where you’re going to be living. The Probation Service is organised into 12 regions across England and Wales, and each region is broken down into local Probation Delivery Units (PDUs), each covering a cluster of local authority areas with its own office or offices. You get allocated to whichever office covers your actual home address, not the court that sentenced you or the prison you were held in.
If you’re coming out of prison, this is arranged before you’re released. Prison-based resettlement staff work with community probation to confirm your release address and allocate you to the right local office and offender manager, so there’s (in theory) someone expecting you. Your licence will normally require you to report to that office, in person, within one working day of release – missing that first appointment without a very good reason is treated as a breach and can lead to recall.
If you’ve been given a community or suspended sentence directly by a court, you’ll usually be told at or shortly after sentencing which office to report to and by when – again based on your home address.
If you move house while you’re being supervised, you have to tell your probation practitioner – it’s normally a condition of your order or licence – and you may be reallocated to a different PDU as a result.
How long you’re under supervision for depends on what you were given, not on which office you attend:
- A community order lasts as long as the court sets, up to a maximum the law allows – commonly up to three years, though it depends on the requirements attached.
- A suspended sentence order runs for the length the court sets when passing sentence, again with a statutory maximum.
- If you’re released from a determinate prison sentence, you’re supervised on licence for the rest of that sentence, and shorter sentences can also carry a further period of post-sentence supervision on top, so that time under supervision in total is rarely less than about 12 months.
- Release arrangements have changed more than once recently as the prison population has been under pressure – see our Breaking News section for the latest on early-release policy, since it directly affects how long you’ll actually spend on licence.
Whatever the length on paper, most orders and licences can now end early if you comply well and finish what was set for you – and can just as easily be extended, breached, or lead to recall if you don’t.
Not sure which office is likely to be yours? Try our postcode search, or check GOV.UK’s official Probation Finder directly.