PPO publish 2025-26 Business Plan and Race Action Plan
The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman has today published our Business Plan and Race Action Plan for 2025/26.
The Business Plan focuses on increasing our awareness amongst those in custody, continuing to deliver investigative excellence in a timely manner, increasing the impact of our work, and using our resources efficiently and effectively.
Read the 2025/26 Business Plan
This year’s Race Action Plan builds on the work of our previous plan, published in October 2024, and reinforces the consensus that we should be ensuring race is considered within our casework.
Ombudsman Adrian Usher said: “Over the past six months we have made significant progress, for example by developing a framework for our fatal incident investigators that provides guidance on how to consider racism within our casework. Our complaints investigators have also started recording where we feel, or the complainant felt, there were issues relating to race.
In addition, we reviewed a sample of our ethnicity data and have amended processes to strengthen its accuracy. We have also analysed a set of our complaints outcomes and certain complaint categories by ethnicity.
Addressing racial discrimination continues to be a priority for me and my office. We will continue working hard to ensure our investigators feel equipped to recognise and address more subtle forms of racism in our investigations.”