Community Payback Consultation 2025

Every year the City of Edinburgh Council’s justice services conducts a Community Payback consultation to gather the public’s views on Community Payback Orders (CPO) which are given by the Court to people as an alternative to a prison sentence, to pay for their crimes. We asked about the unpaid work part of a CPO; this is when an individual who has committed an offence does unpaid work in the community.

We asked about general awareness of CPOs and unpaid work.

We asked whether you thought unpaid work helped to reduce offending.

We asked whether you thought unpaid work gave people the opportunity to pay for their crimes.

We asked for your suggestions about community projects or organisations that could benefit from unpaid work.

We received 54 responses for the 2025 consultation.

The majority of respondents (94%) were either fully or partly aware of CPOs, with 6% of respondents saying they had no awareness.

There was a very high level of awareness of unpaid work with 94% of respondents stating they were fully aware of unpaid work with the remaining 6% having partial awareness.

Respondents were less clear on whether community payback helped to reduce reoffending. For example, 63% were fully or partly confident that it did. However, 30% were unsure. 7% of respondents reported that they did not believe community payback reduced offending.

91% of respondents thought that community payback gave people who have committed offences the opportunity to pay for their crimes either fully or in part.  9% were unsure or disagreed, believing that unpaid work did not present the opportunity to pay back to the community for crimes committed.

Community payback as an option to support communities was popular with 69% of respondents stating that they thought unpaid work could be of benefit to them, their organisation, or their community.

Respondents were invited to make suggestions for how community payback could support their community. 89% put forward ideas for unpaid work, community projects, and organisations that could benefit from the service.  

The level of awareness of unpaid work and community payback is high amongst respondents to this consultation. However, it is clear that there is less confidence amongst respondents that community payback reduces reoffending. A short report on headline community justice data will be published on the Council’s website (community justice webpage) in January 2026. The report will consider and highlight relevant research in this area. 

To continue to raise awareness of the value of community payback further, justice services will publish a Community Payback Annual Report on the Council’s website in Spring 2026 providing examples of unpaid work and how it has benefitted local communities. Justice services also plan to work with staff from the Council’s media team to share more good news stories of how unpaid work has improved communities.

All suggestions submitted for unpaid work projects will be passed to the unpaid work team for consideration. 

Justice services would like to thank everyone who took part in the consultation.