Unpaid Work is a Community Sentence, known as Community Payback, which allows for convicted offenders to pay back to the communities they have offended in and provides courts with a robust alternative to short term custodial sentences. Every year over five million hours of Unpaid Work are completed by offenders. Community Payback should be a visible punishment, with offenders making reparation to their local areas for the harms caused by crime. A key function of the Probation Service is to supervise offenders who have been sentenced to between 40 and 300 hours of Community Payback, depending on the seriousness of their offending. The work completed by offenders is beneficial in addressing local priorities such as anti-social behaviour and delivering projects that tangibly benefit local communities and support the environment.
This year, the Prime Minister set out his intention to tackle anti-social behaviour as a priority. The Government has this year launched an Anti-Social Behaviour action plan, which includes the Community Payback Autumn Clean as an opportunity to target areas identified by members of the public and local partners as in need of a clean-up. This follows on from the success of Community Payback’s 2023 Spring Clean event, where teams delivered over 310 visible projects, amounting to around 12,000 hours of unpaid work. The initiative involved over 1,800 offenders and 5,000 bags of litter were collected nationally.
If you would like to propose a local project please use the online nomination form - https://www.gov.uk/nominate-community-payback-project.
Please submit specific proposals for the Autumn Clean by close of play on 11 August.