Overview
- In a July National Audit Office report auditors said nearly 9,000 people recorded as having active monitoring orders were under review as untagged at the end of March while the Ministry of Justice reported 5,450 untagged cases for the same date.
- The NAO identified specific operational defects, including a Serco contract that allows 29–53 hours to report a breach, between 530,000 and three million automated alerts a year, and only 10–50% of breach details being passed on to probation teams.
- Auditors found HMPPS and the MoJ cannot reliably tell how long offenders remain unmonitored or whether untagged individuals commit new crimes, and they observed both serious and minor breaches being handled in the same way.
- The government says install rates have risen by nearly 50% since 2024 and that it is investing over £100 million to expand electronic monitoring, while parliamentary committees and opposition figures say expansion should pause until fixes are delivered.
- The number of people on monitoring orders has more than doubled since 2021 to about 28,700 by March 2026, and ministers estimate up to 22,000 extra tags per year will be needed from 2027, raising concern that demand will outstrip the flawed system’s capacity.