A CONSORTIUM of public, private and social enterprise agencies has welcomed news that it has won a £100m contract to run probation services in Durham and Tees Valley.

ARCC (Achieving Real Change in Communities) has been awarded the Government contract to provide probation and rehabilitation to offenders in the Durham Tees Valley area.

The contract is set for seven years with a possible extension to ten years. The consortium of North-East agencies says the contract is worth about £14m per year, subject to targets being met. That makes it worth nearly £100m for the first seven years.

Chair of ARCC Mike Batty said: “We are delighted to have won this Government contract for the new probation services here. ARCC will deliver real change in the way services for ex-offenders are delivered. We will drive down rates of re-offending in Durham Tees Valley.

"We have the experience and the commitment to new ways of working to be able to make that happen.”

In North Yorkshire, the FTSE-listed Purple Futures will be running the probation.

The Government has been working over a number of months towards privatisation of probation services – handing over responsibility for low and medium risk offenders to Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). It has just announced its contracts for running the services.

The move has attracted fierce criticism from a number of quarters, including probation union, Napo, who say the move has left the remaining publicly-run probation services – for high risk offenders – dangerously understaffed.

It says there are cases where newly-recruited, untrained staff have had to manage high risk offenders such as serious sex offenders without training. It says it has also resulted in problems in communication between the two sides of probation which, in particular, were resulting in domestic violence and child protection issues slipping through the net.