Corporate report

Ministry of Justice Outcome Delivery Plan: 2021-22

Published 15 July 2021

Applies to England and Wales

The Rt Hon Robert Buckland, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Ministry of Justice

Antonia Romeo, Permanent Secretary

Foreword

The justice system is an essential public service, relied upon by millions of victims, families and businesses across our country to deliver justice outcomes that matter to them. Throughout the past year, the dedication and hard work of our teams and partners has kept that system going.

We are working to recover, rebuild and restore the justice system to its rightful place at the heart of our society and the foundation of our economy.

First, we must continue to rise to the challenges the pandemic presents the justice system and maintain our focus on recovery.

Secondly, we need to look beyond COVID-19 and rebuild public confidence in the justice system, by:

• Building back safer: continuing to put public protection at the heart of criminal justice, cutting crime and reducing reoffending.
• Building back stronger: by ensuring the justice system works for those who need it most.
• Building back fairer: to deliver swift access to justice to deliver a first-class public service that works in the interests of all people and businesses.

Thirdly, our goal throughout will be to restore law and justice to their rightful place at the heart of society and reaffirm the position of justice within the constitution of the whole of the United Kingdom.

The whole of the Ministry of Justice is aligned behind this vision and strategy. There are clear plans for delivery of all our objectives, supported by effective governance and resources that are aligned across the Group and with our partners.

We are working to build a leading-edge organisation that is open, inclusive and welcomes innovation. Delivering the objectives set out in this plan is possible through the professionalism and commitment of our 80,000+ colleagues who all work every day to protect and advance the principles of justice.

A. Executive summary

Vision and Mission

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) works to protect and advance the principles of justice. Our vision is to deliver a world-class justice system that works for everyone in society.

The justice system plays a crucial role in our success as a nation – keeping people safe, emphasising fairness, guaranteeing individual rights and giving businesses confidence to flourish.

Last year, that system had to respond to the unprecedented pressures of a global pandemic. We avoided large scale loss of life in prisons and we continued to ensure that services across Justice operated effectively. Embedded throughout our delivery plan for the year ahead is the need for us to recover from the effects of coronavirus (COVID-19).

As we recover from the pandemic, we will rebuild public confidence in the justice system. The delivery of our three strategic outcomes are central to doing this:

1. Protect the public from serious offenders and improve the safety and security of our prisons. We will deliver better sentencing, more prison places, safer prisons and strong action on extremism.
2. Reduce reoffending. We will play a vital role in reducing crime through breaking the cycle of reoffending by focusing on proven interventions: a home, a job and access to treatment for substance-misuse.
3. Deliver swift access to justice. We will increase the throughput of volumes of cases by maximising capacity and make the courts and tribunals system stronger and smarter and work to support victims, tackling sexual and domestic violence and making sure the vulnerable are supported in the justice system.

Our priority outcomes

This delivery plan sets out in detail how we will deliver our priority outcomes, how we will measure our success, and how we will ensure we continuously improve.

1. Protect the public from serious offenders and improve the safety and security of our prisons.
2. Reduce reoffending.
3. Deliver swift access to justice.

The department is also supporting the delivery of the following Priority Outcomes led by other departments:

Priority outcome title	Lead department
Reduce crime	Home Office
Support the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children and young people through high quality local services so that no one is left behind	Department for Education
End rough sleeping through more effective prevention and crisis intervention services and reduce homelessness by enabling local authorities to fully meet their statutory duties	Ministry of Housing, Communities and local government

Strategic Enablers

To deliver our priority outcomes - and reinforce the ambitions of the Declaration on Government Reform - we will focus on four key enablers:

1. Workforce, Skills and Location.
2. Innovation, Technology and Data.
3. Delivery, Evaluation and Collaboration.
4. Sustainability.

B. Introduction

1. Context

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant changes to the way we deliver the justice system. Last year our primary focus was to keep prisoners, young people and children in custody, people on probation, Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) service users, our workforce and our stakeholders COVID-19 safe whilst implementing innovative ways to ensure the justice system kept operating and delivering our core objective to keep the public safe by having a secure and safe prison environment, whilst also protecting the NHS and saving lives.

We anticipate that the path of recovery from COVID-19 in 2021/22 will include challenges, with potential impacts on our physical capacity to manage outstanding caseloads in courts and rebuild public confidence in the justice system. We are also mindful of the impact that COVID-19 has had on the mental health and wellbeing of people in prison and their opportunities to turn away from a path of further offending. COVID-19 also creates opportunities we wish to explore. We are learning from the roll out of audio/visual technology in supporting parole hearings, and virtual hearings, both between prisons and courts and more widely. We want to build on this learning with our partners in the justice system to continue to invent and adopt new ways of working.

We can expect the demand for and the levels of expectations on our justice services to increase. In the criminal justice system, the recruitment of an additional 20,000 new police officers over this Parliament – a 20% increase – and the implementation of tougher sentences will start to impact demand for courts, probation services, prison places and victims’ services. Being tougher on crime is expected to impact the prison population and we have secured funding for an additional 18,000 places to ensure we have enough capacity to meet this rising demand. In the civil and family courts and tribunals, we might see changing demands as a result of the wider economic and social impacts of COVID-19, and we will need ensure we are ready to respond to this.

In the short-term, labour market conditions will aid our ability to recruit, build our workforce capacity and create many hundreds of high-quality jobs. Beyond this, as the government increases investment in infrastructure projects, there may be uncertainties around market capacity that could delay our progress in building prison capacity as our new prisons come into the market alongside schools and hospitals. We will work with the market to be prepared for this.

The capacity and capability of our workforce remain both a risk to and an opportunity for our delivery in the year ahead. Through our Workforce, Skills and Location enabler, we will be working to mitigate these risks, maintain resilience, finding ways to embrace and capitalise on the new ways of working and new styles of interaction adopted through the pandemic.

We rely more than ever on technology and IT systems. These have responded well over the last year and remained resilient because of our investments in routing traffic to the cloud. Continuous investment is needed to reduce the level of risk in our legacy systems and to improve the security of business-critical systems. Technology also has the potential to improve our services, creating a far more efficient and accessible justice system. We are learning from our delivery of HMCTS reform and our experience of the roll out of secure video calls, now running in 120 prisons and young offender institutions. A service that has helped families remain connected, through almost 6,000 secure video calls per week.

2. Governance and delivery agencies

Details of the 34 agencies and public bodies we work with can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations#ministry-of-justice

Departmental governance:

The Departmental Board is the principal governance body of MoJ and is chaired by the Secretary of State. The board is comprised of the ministerial team, Executive Committee members and four non-executive directors. It is an advisory body that supports the Secretary of State on strategic and operational issues affecting the department’s performance.

The Departmental Board has three committees that report into it:

The Audit and Risk Assurance Committee (ARAC) and the Nominations and Remuneration Committee, both chaired by non-executive directors, in accordance with the Cabinet Office Corporate Governance Code. The department’s Delivery Board shapes and oversees the implementation of our strategy and delivery priorities.

The Executive Committee is chaired by the Permanent Secretary. It has overall collective responsibility for the department and has responsibility for the delivery of the departmental priorities and outcomes as set out in this plan and management of associated risks. The Executive Committee has four committees that report into it:

The Finance, Performance and Risk Committee is chaired by the Chief Financial Officer. It focuses on budgets, oversees performance against the Outcome Delivery Plan and monitors/challenges the management of the principal risks.

The Portfolio Committee is chaired by the Chief Financial Officer. It drives delivery of the change portfolio and scrutinises major projects in the portfolio.

The Investment Committee is chaired by the Chief Financial Officer. It considers and approves investment decisions ensuring that the overall shape of the portfolio is aligned with MoJ’s strategy, provides value for money, is delivering intended benefits, including improved sustainability.

The People Business Committee is chaired by the Chief People Officer. It ensures delivery of the MoJ people strategy and oversees people matters throughout MoJ, including workforce management, building capabilities, enhancing leadership and promoting our required culture and values.

We will review and build on our existing cross-Whitehall jurisdictional work and delivery forums – such as the Criminal Justice Board and Family Justice Board – introducing new structures where necessary to ensure coordination of cross-Whitehall work and support for the delivery of our cross-cutting outcome to deliver swift access to justice. In the year ahead our work to deliver recovery in the criminal justice system will be supported by the Criminal Justice Action Group, chaired by the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Justice.

3. Overview of strategic risk

• The ongoing challenges of COVID-19: uncertainty over further waves of COVID-19 and ongoing disruption to business as usual activities mean risks remain to the delivery of all our objectives.
• Our most significant operational delivery risks: our ability to reduce the high levels of outstanding cases in the criminal and family courts, and to ensure that there is always sufficient prison capacity to fulfil the sentences of the courts.
• Technology, security and information management: ensuring that we continue to reduce our technical debt, reduce the likelihood of cyber security attack, keep our information secure and enable compliance with General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and other legislation.
• Commercial: dealing with our commercial challenges, including the strength and confidence of markets and supplier financial sustainability.
• People and capability: ensuring the wellbeing of our people, leading the way in developing innovative future ways of working, developing the right capacity and capability to deal with future challenges and provide the best evidence and insight.
• Change: we have an ambitious portfolio of change projects with a range of risks that require active and ongoing management to ensure delivery.

4. Our resources

a. Our finances:

• Departmental Expenditure Limit (DEL): £11.1 billion.
• Resource DEL (including depreciation): £9.4 billion.
• Capital DEL: £1.7 billion.
• Annually Managed Expenditure (AME): £0.4 billion.

Source: Main Supply Estimates 2021/22

5. Our people:

As at 31 December 2020, Ministry of Justice (inc Arm’s-Length Bodies) had 74,790 full-time equivalent employees.

Source: ONS public sector employment data / Release schedule: quarterly

C. Priority Outcomes Delivery Plans

1. Protect the public from serious offenders and improve the safety and security of our prisons

Lead ministers:
Alex Chalk MP, Prisons and Probations Minister Chris Philp MP, Minister for Justice

Senior sponsors:
Jo Farrar (Second Permanent Secretary and Chief Executive Officer HMPPS), Jerome Glass (Interim Director General, Policy and Strategy Group)

Outcome Strategy:

The first duty of the government is to keep our country safe. Public protection is at the heart of an effective criminal justice system. The sentencing white paper published last September laid the groundwork for a better-balanced system. To keep the public safe from serious offenders and implement these sentencing reforms we aim to create capacity in our prisons, delivered through new build and modernisation of the existing estate. This expansion will be complemented by our work to improve safety and security in prisons by reducing contraband that leads to violence, self-harm and crime behind bars. Finally, we will strengthen counter-terrorism capabilities in Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) to address the risks from the highest risk offenders.

To deliver this strategy in 2021/22 we will:

• Recover from COVID-19. Our custodial and probation services will be ready to operate in any post-COVID-19 environment.
• Implement the Counter Terrorism and Sentencing Act and deliver planned sentencing reform through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which will ensure that violent and sexual offenders serve longer sentences that better reflect the harm they cause.
• Reduce the loss of prison places through greater investment in maintenance and deliver 18,000 additional prisons places by the mid-2020s.
• Deliver the Next Generation Prison Reform Programme to modernise and maintain the efficiency of our service.
• Deliver the Prison Safety Programme. Key commitments under this programme include delivery of the Offender Management in Custody model, the roll out of a revised case-management model for supporting prisoners who are at risk of harming themselves.
• Complete our Security Investment Programme with the roll out of enhanced gate security.
• Deliver our Counter Terrorism Step Up programme to enhance our capacity and capability to monitor terrorist offenders and improve our long-term and high security estate.
• Develop an outline of reform to the parole system, to deliver greater transparency and understanding of the process.

Our performance metrics

Metric	Description
Number of useable prison places (useable operational capacity)	Monthly prisons capacity – useable prison places i.e. increase through maintenance and new builds and not crowding or using unsuitable cells
Rate of assaults by prisoners on prisoners (per 1,000 prisoners)	Monthly rate of incidents per 1,000 prisoners
Rate of assaults by prisoners on staff (per 1,000 prisoners)	Monthly rate of incidents per 1,000 prisoners
Rate of incidents of self-harm (per 1,000 prisoners)	Monthly rate of incidents per 1,000 prisoners
% of positive drug tests	% of random mandatory drug tests for illicit substances with positive results
% of the overall probation caseload that result in a Serious Further Offence (SFO) conviction	% of those in the overall probation caseload that result in an SFO conviction

How our work contributes to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG):

Priority Outcome	Link to SDGs
Protect the public from serious offenders and improve the safety and security of our prisons	SDG 8 – Decent work and economic growth (Target 8.8)
	SDG 12 – Responsible consumption and production (Targets 12.6, 12.8)
	SDG 13 – Climate action (Target 13.2)
	SDG 16 – Peace, justice and strong institutions (Targets 16a, 16.1, 16.4, 16.6, 16.7)

Projects and Programmes

We aim to create capacity in our prisons in 2021/22 and improve prison safety and security by delivering the following programmes [SDG 8.7,12.6, 12.8]:

HMP Five Wells:

• Design and construction of a resettlement prison at HMP Five Wells (completion October 2021)
• Successful mobilisation of the new prison by the operator (first prisoner January 2022; full capacity October 2022)

Glen Parva:

• Design and construction of a new resettlement prison at Glen Parva.
• Securing a Private Operator to run the prison through a competition from the Prison Operator Services Framework.
• Successful mobilisation of the new prison by the operator.

10k places:

• 4 new-build prisons (2026).
• Expansion of existing adult male estate through house blocks and Category D prisons.
• Expansion of existing adult women’s estate (2025).

Completing the work of the Security Investment Programme (March 2022) [SDG16.4]

1.2 Outcome Evaluation Plan

Outcome Evaluation Plans include our work to counter terrorism and improve prison security including:

Extremism Risk Guideline (ERG)22+ Validity Study – this study aims to statistically assess the validity and reliability of Extremism Risk Guidelines (ERG) 22+. The ERG 22+ being a tool to inform risk and sentence management decisions and determine the rehabilitative needs of the offender.

Healthy Identity Intervention Interim Outcome Evaluation – to assess the interim-outcomes for Healthy Identity Intervention (HII) participants. These are adults who have committed extremist offences and engaged in a programme to support desistance and disengagement from extremism, encourage stronger positive and pro-social aspects of identity, helping to develop resilience and find ways of meeting their identity needs.

Evaluation of the Security Investment Programme (SIP) - process, impact and economic evaluation of the x-ray body scanner and enhanced gate security, counter corruption, digital/intelligence, staff capability, mobile phones and multi-agency response to serious organised crime strands in the SIP to strengthen security in our prisons.

2. Reduce reoffending

Lead ministers:
Alex Chalk MP, Prisons and Probations Minister Kit Malthouse MP Minister of State for Victims and Reducing Reoffending

Senior sponsors:
Jo Farrar (Second Permanent Secretary and Chief Executive Officer HMPPS), Jerome Glass (Interim Director General, Policy and Strategy Group)

Outcome Strategy:

Our strategy to reduce reoffending is central to the government’s commitment to cut crime. Around 80% of convictions and cautions come from those who have previously offended (MoJ, 2020).

We are focusing on the interventions that are known to work: a home, a job and access to treatment for substance misuse. We will work with other government departments to deliver targeted interventions to tackle reoffending, including the roll out of transitional accommodation in five areas of the country to support those leaving prison at risk of homelessness, and fulfil our manifesto commitment to create a new Prisoner Education Service.

We are targeting our approach with other government departments to help reduce reoffending amongst young people and prevent them from offending in the first place. We will also commence delivery of the commitments set out in the Female Offending Strategy (2018), acquiring the site for the first residential women’s centre (RWC) site in Wales. This approach will support women offenders to address the underlying causes of their offending behaviour and thereby reduce reoffending.

We completed our transition to a stronger and more sustainable probation model in June 2021. This model will establish clear accountabilities, ensure that staff have the right skills to perform their duties, implement innovative rehabilitative programmes of work to prevent future crime and increase supervision of offenders outside of prison, so the courts will have confidence that monitoring will be strict and community sentences will be robust and effective.

To deliver this strategy in 2021/22 we will:

Deliver a Community Accommodation Service, including Approved Premises expansion and improvement and the provision of transitional accommodation for prison leavers at risk of homelessness in five probation regions, supported by dedicated housing officers.

We will work within sixteen prisons to test new processes and initiatives across accommodation, education, employment and substance misuse treatment to improve the rehabilitative support individuals receive in custody.

Continue the roll out of community sentence treatment requirements to new areas, to address the underlying cause of offending, for vulnerable offenders with mental health, alcohol and substance abuse issues.

To have delivered our Probation Reform Programme by unifying the probation service, as planned, in June 2021. This will improve services, build resilience and reduce reoffending.

Introduce legislative and practical changes to create strong alternatives to youth custody for children and reform the experience for the minority of those who must be detained. We will open our first Secure School by 2023, transforming the Medway secure training centre in Rochester, ensuring that young people in custody get access to integrated education, health and care.

Pilot Residential Women’s Centres, acquiring the first site in Wales.

Test new approaches to reduce reoffending and develop solutions to the key challenges prison leavers face through the prison leavers project.

Improve our electronic monitoring service, increase the use of alcohol abstinence monitoring and expand the use of Global Positioning System tagging.

Our performance metrics

Metric	Description
% of prisoners in work six months after their release	For those under National Probation Service (NPS)/Community Rehabilitation Contract (CRC) supervision
% of prisoners in settled accommodation three months after release. This will be the primary metric in 2021/22	For those under NPS/CRC supervision
% of adults with a need for treatment for substance misuse who successfully engage in community-based structured treatment within three weeks of release from prison	For those under NPS/CRC supervision

How our work contributes to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG):

Priority Outcome	Link to SDGs
Reduce reoffending	SDG 3 – Good health and wellbeing (Target 3.5)
	SDG 4 – Quality education (Targets 4.4, 4.6, 4a)
	SDG 5 – Gender equality (Targets 5.1, 5c)
	SDG 8 – Decent work and economic growth (Targets 8.3, 8.5, 8.6)
	SDG 10 – Reduced inequalities (Target 10.2)
	SDG 16 – Peace, justice and strong institutions (Targets 16a, 16.1, 16.6, 16.7)

Projects and Programmes

The Reducing Reoffending Delivery Programme will:

• Deliver a Community Accommodation Service.
• Deliver an improved approach to securing employment for prisoners [SDG 8.3 & 8.5].
• Improved approach to connecting prisoners to community services to continue their substance misuse treatment. (including through Health and Justice Co-ordinators in probation [SDG 3.5].

The probation reform programme will:

• Strengthen engagement and collaboration with local partners such as devolved authorities, Police and Crime Commissioners and others.
• Accelerate the professionalisation of our workforce to secure the skills necessary to deliver effective probation services.
• Improve our ability as a department to disseminate change quickly across the probation system.

1.2 Outcome Evaluation Plan

Probation reform - The evaluation programme will separate into multiple thematic areas with various initiatives expected to be piloted during the next five years. A mixed-methods approach (process, impact, economic evaluation) will be used depending on the requirements of each component part of the evaluation.

Reduce Reoffending Delivery Programme - The overall aim will be to understand how the programme has been implemented, whether it has led to the intended outcomes, and determine which ways of working should continue, be amended or be stopped completely. We are also looking to undertake a longer-term evaluation plan.

Youth Justice Programme - Aim to review the process and impacts of implementing reform change across the youth estate, focusing on the mechanisms of planning, introducing and implementing change, identifying challenges, and lessons learned to share across the estate. Impact evaluation will explore whether the programme has met its key aims of improving safety for children and staff across the secure estate and improving life chances for children in custody.

3. Deliver swift access to justice

Lead ministers:
The Rt Hon Robert Buckland, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Ministry of Justice, Lord Wolfson, Courts and Law Minister, Kit Malthouse MP, Minister of State for Victims and Reducing Reoffending

Senior sponsors:
Antonia Romeo, Permanent Secretary, Kevin Sadler, Interim Chief Executive Officer HMCTS, Jerome Glass (Interim Director General, Policy and Strategy Group)

Outcome Strategy:

Justice is a core public service relied upon by victims, families and businesses. Whether to resolve a business dispute, protect a child at risk, or bring an offender to justice – we aim to ensure that when our system is needed, it can be accessed swiftly.

Above all, this means a plan for recovery to tackle outstanding cases created by the circumstances of the global pandemic. In addition, we will take steps to make the courts and tribunals system stronger and smarter to improve the running of cases and the experience of all who use them, whether that’s defendants, victims, witnesses or lawyers. We will pursue smarter and faster alternatives to court across civil and family justice, through different ways to resolve disputes and introducing important cross-system reforms in family justice to guide families to the best outcome possible for them. This approach enables us to deliver a better experience for our users while ensuring that resources at court are focused on those who need them most. Alongside these changes we will support victims to access justice in a way that ensures they feel protected, cared for and safe. We remain committed to the sustainability of the criminal legal aid system, now and in the future, ensuring that the system that can adapt to the changing needs of defendants, practitioners and the criminal justice system of which it is such an integral part.

To deliver this strategy in 2021/22 we will:

• Recover from COVID-19 and reduce outstanding cases in our courts and tribunals by:
  • maximising courtroom capacity and hearing capability across the courts and tribunals estate whilst ensuring that the appropriate COVID-19 safety measures are in operation.
  • optimising performance in the courts and tribunals by increasing the throughput of volumes of cases and managing the levels of outstanding caseloads.
  • working with other government departments to progress ways of resolving disputes which do not involve court hearings.
• Deliver the Court Reform Programme, a key enabler to modernising and transforming the procedures and infrastructure of courts and tribunals, to further build organisational resilience and accelerate recovery, including development of the Common Platform and investing in remote hearing tools.
• Reform the pension scheme to resolve the serious recruitment and retention issues within the judiciary, and recruit 1,100 judges and 1,500 magistrates.
• Provide victims with a service in which they feel protected, cared for and safe by:
  • investing in victims’ services to support all victims of crime, with a particular focus on victims of sexual violence and domestic abuse. 
  • consulting on a Victims’ Law.
  • publishing a cross-government victims’ funding strategy.
  • publishing the Rape Review and taking forward a programme of work to address the low number of effective trials in rape and sexual offence cases.
  • implementing the Domestic Abuse Act to protect people from control, coercion and abuse.
  • piloting integrated domestic abuse courts.
• Respond to the Criminal Legal Aid Review before the end of the year, which aims to ensure the legal aid sector can adapt to the changing criminal justice system..

Departments supporting the outcome delivery:

Crown Prosecution Service – Responsible for prosecuting cases and the progression of cases through the criminal justice system.

Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy – Responsible for legislation governing employment tribunals.

Home Office – Responsible for recruitment and investment in specialist capabilities across law enforcement; tackling neighbourhood crime; delivery of preventative interventions to reduce pressure on the criminal justice system; victim support; investments in research, evidence and data; immigration and asylum decisions, which drive tribunal demand.

Department for Work and Pensions – Responsible for welfare benefits decisions, which drive demand in social security and child support tribunals.

Department for Education – Joint responsibility for the First-tier Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) tribunal operating effectively; engagement as part of the family justice system and working with MoJ to prioritise child safeguarding issues and adoption in court.

Our performance metrics

Metric	Description
Disposal volumes – in the Crown Court	Monthly disposal volumes for Crown Court cases, reported by case (guilty, not guilty and other) and offence type (determine if all types or selection of serious and non-serious)
Disposal volumes – in magistrates’ courts	Monthly disposal volumes for Non-Single Justice Procedure cases
Disposal volumes – in family courts (private and public law)	Monthly disposal volumes broken down by public and private law cases
Disposal volumes – in employment tribunals	Monthly disposal volumes for single claims
Victims’ awareness of the Victims’ Code	Proportion of victims who had heard of the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime

How our work contributes to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG):

Priority Outcome	Link to SDGs
Deliver swift access to justice	SDG 5 – Gender equality (Targets 5.1, 5.2, 5c)
	SDG 16 – Peace, justice and strong institutions (Targets 16.6, 16.7)

Projects and Programmes

Through our Court reform programme

• Professional court users will be able to access a single crime platform to share and access case information, bringing greater consistency and efficiency to the way criminal cases are managed.
• Local authorities will apply online to take children into care and users will be able opt to resolve simple disputes online.

Victims’ support/law

• Deliver a cross-government strategy to better align and refine outcomes for funding for support services for victims (2021).
• Increase in victims who receive their rights and have confidence in the criminal justice system (2021).
• Consult on a Victims’ Law (2021).

Domestic abuse

• Pilot Integrated Domestic Abuse Court, which will improve outcomes for victims of domestic abuse, introduce an investigative approach in the family courts and implement the Harm Panel recommendations (2023).
• implementing the Domestic Abuse Act.

1.2 Outcome Evaluation Plan

HMCTS Reform Programme - The Overarching Evaluation is a five-year evaluation programme running alongside the HMCTS reform programme. The evaluation will help assess whether the reforms are meeting their intended aims, improving access to justice, and ensuring the justice system is fair. We have identified four main themes in the reform programme and our research is structured around these:

• Redesigning channels around user needs and a shift towards online services.
• Enhancing the use of audio and video hearings.
• Changing the physical court estate and the way it is utilised.
• Centralising processes and providing additional support where required.

Legal aid review - We will monitor the impact of changes to the fee schemes through information gathered through the billing process. The impact on the provider base will be monitored through Legal Aid Agency (LAA) management information. Sustainability and diversity impacts in particular will continue to be assessed through the data sharing arrangements secured with the representative bodies (e.g. The Law Society and the Bar Council). These data linkages provide detailed information on provider base characteristics.

The impact on the provider base will be monitored through LAA management information. Sustainability and diversity impact in particular will continue to be assessed through the data sharing arrangements secured with the representative bodies (e.g. The Law Society and the Bar Council).

D. Strategic Enablers

Workforce, Skills, and Location

We are the second largest Whitehall department. We aim to significantly improve and elevate employee experience within MoJ and to partner our business leaders in the development and delivery of their strategies and services to both colleagues and the public.

People survey engagement score

Year	Engagement score
2020	61%
2019	59%
2018	57%

Source: Civil Service People Survey/Release schedule: annually

Representation of female staff, ethnic minority staff and disabled staff

Year	Total number of staff	Female	Ethnic minority	Disabled
2020	76,449	54.3%	14.0%	13.9%
2019	75,237	53.6%	13.3%	12.8%
2018	71,596	53.3%	12.1%	8.9%

Source: Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Dashboard/Release schedule: quarterly

Innovation, Technology and Data

• We will enable digital transformation of services for over 1 million users, developing digital services to support priorities and improve access to services. We will drive a user-centred approach to policy design with high-quality data and analytical services helping to ensure strategic, policy, financial, corporate and operational decisions are based on robust evidence.

Delivery, Evaluation and Collaboration

• This sits at the heart of our capability as a department to deliver our Outcome Delivery Plan in 21/22. Through an inclusive culture, that encourages excellence and collaboration in our capability to plan and co-ordinate, we will embed a culture across MoJ of managing delivery with rigour and efficiency supported by effective and insightful evaluation.

Sustainability

• We are committed to putting environmental sustainability at the heart of our operations and decision-making by embedding sustainability principles into everything we do. We recognise that, as the department with the second largest estate in government, we have a responsibility to reduce our impacts on the environment and increase biodiversity.

Greenhouse gas emissions

Year	Total emissions
2019	40%
2018	34%

Source: Greening Government Commitments annual reports Release schedule: annually

E. Our equality objectives

We have set objectives to help us advance equality. These are:

Objective 1:

Ensure that the benefits of the justice system (protecting the public from the most serious offenders; safety and security in prisons; support to desist and abstain from crime and increase the employment opportunities for ex-offending; accessible and easy to navigate courts and tribunals) are felt by both businesses and citizens across the whole of the UK.

Objective 2:

Promote equality in our core operational and policy work, such as:

• Deliver the National Strategy for Disabled Persons, including flagship work to improve support for service users with neurodiverse conditions.
• Deliver the HMCTS Vulnerability Action Plan to co-ordinate our work to support vulnerable users during COVID-19, which includes putting in place help or alternative solutions where possible for our users to access our services.
• Deliver improved, evidence-based interventions to achieve better outcomes for minority groups.

Objective 3:

Through our Belonging approach we will embed equality and inclusion into our policies, service and culture. We will ensure this through leadership, person-centred line management, good governance and meaningful metrics, and empower everyone to belong and thrive at work through employee engagement, opportunities and enhanced staff networks and champions:

• Embed: To transform people and pay policies through simplification, standardisation, measures to enhance equality and utilising digital improvements to enhance staff user experience and engagement with policy products.
• Ensure: To ensure People Business Committee (as a sub-committee of the Executive Committee’s People Group, a pan-MoJ collaborative committee) gives full consideration on a monthly basis to equality and inclusion impacts of people-related policies and change. The review mechanism during 2021/22 should be through the Government Internal Audit Agency audit of equality and diversity.
• Empower: Design and delivery of a portfolio of leadership events that enable current and future leaders to train, perform and stretch, fully appreciating the diverse needs of our customer base across MoJ – Measure 15-20% of leadership development programme places will be provided to under-represented groups.