Birchills-Leamore by-election

You may or may not know that there was a by-election to Walsall Council today caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor. I’m pleased to welcome newly elected Cllr Kamran Aftab to the Conservative group – who won the seat from Labour by 103 votes. Well done!

RIP Councillor Cath Micklewright

I was really saddened to hear about the passing of a colleague and friend of mine – Cllr Cath Micklewright. She represented the neighbouring ward of Rushall-Shelfield and was a great help and support to me since I joined the Council. Cath was the Deputy Mayor and she provided a fantastic service to her constituents and the Council. I will miss her friendship, cheekiness and fantastic sense of humour. God bless you Cath.

Stonnall Road: Reply from the Government

I today received an email from the Government about the Stonnall Road premises:

“As head of the Approved Premises policy team, I have been asked to reply.

You asked to be sent the process for unapproving Approved Premises (or APs). I will address this shortly, but it may help if I first make some general observations about APs.

APs are a vital public protection resource. They provide accommodation and enhanced supervision for those on released from prison on licence, serving community orders, or required to reside there by the courts as part of their bail conditions. All APs are staffed 24 hours a day and have a range of security measures including closed circuit television and regular room searches. Residents are required to comply with various rules of residence, including a nightly curfew from 11pm to 6am, and additional conditions can be imposed on individual residents if needed. Breach of these rules or of bail or licence conditions means that the resident will be liable to be returned to prison or have his bail withdrawn. The presence of an AP in a neighbourhood enhances public protection since, without it, offenders would have to be placed in less suitable and unsupervised accommodation, such as bed and breakfast.

APs accommodate a range of those convicted of or bailed for various offences, including those of a serious violent or sexual nature. All prospective residents are carefully assessed prior being accepted, to ensure that they do not pose a level of risk to the wider community, staff or fellow residents that cannot be safely managed. Anyone whose level of risk is assessed as not being manageable in the community will not normally be accepted. Some residents will be subject to additional levels of control and supervision via Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements or MAPPA.

Turning to closure, there is in fact no set process for either approving APs or withdrawing approval. The current legislation, the Offender Management Act 2007, contains a power for the Secretary of State to approve APs but does not specify a process.

If for any reason a Probation Area felt that an AP ought to be shut, it would need to make a recommendation to the Secretary of State. That would include the business case for doing so, which would need to set out reasons and explain how the Area planned to manage high-risk offenders in the community without the resource that the AP provided. As a rule, I would not expect an Area to be recommending that an AP be closed unless they were able to provide an equally effective alternative way of dealing with the offenders in question. Given the importance of APs in offender management, this means in practice that an AP will not normally be shut unless another has been developed first.

I understand that you are particularly interested in the AP at Stonnall Road in Walsall. West Midlands Probation Area have said for more than ten years that they would be prepared to move from Stonnall Road, subject to a suitable (and larger) alternative site being found – although I must stress that they have never said that they regard the Stonnall Road location as inherently unsafe or unsuitable. I understand that Walsall Borough Council continue to seek an alternative site and are currently conducting a search, but so far it has not proved possible for the Council to come up with anything concrete. Until that can be provided, it will not be possible to close Stonnall Road. To do so without an alternative would reduce the amount of supervised accommodation in the area and so would reduce public protection. Furthermore, APs cannot be developed without the full co-operation of local authorities, so we are forced to rely on what the Council can provide before we can act.

Other than its possible replacement, I am not aware of any reason to believe that Stonnall Road ought to be closed. Both the National Offender Management Service and West Midlands Probation Area are confident in the professionalism of their staff, the robustness of their procedures, and the effectiveness of the management of offenders placed there. I recognise that a number of recent incidents have given to rise to concern locally, but I can assure you that the AP continues to manage offenders effectively, and indeed has made a positive contribution to the way those incidents have been dealt with. The AP enabled action to be taken that would have been considerably more difficult if it had not been there.

Yours sincerely”

The bit about Walsall Council having to find replacement land is wrong. Walsall Council has no statutory duty to either find land for the Probation Service or any obligation to give planning permission. The Government do in fact have property and estates departments that are capable of finding replacement land – we see no evidence of them doing so.

Any thoughts? Please email them to me: flowermd@walsall.gov.uk