It’s extremely difficult for ex-offenders to find work, regardless of aptitude or experience; a criminal record marginalises an individual and can mean automatic exclusion from employment. This was the gist of a conversation between Mick May (former financial services executive) and Steve Finn (former prisoner) that led to the foundation of Blue Sky Development in 2005.

They have a point. According to the Social Exclusion Unit, over 75 per cent of the 90,000 prisoners who re-enter society each year are unemployed upon release. It is eight times harder for an ex-offender to find work than for someone with no criminal record, and up to 20 per cent of the UK working age population have one. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, 60 per cent reoffend within two years of release.

Despite theoretical compassion from the business world – Business in the Community found that 80 per cent of business leaders agreed that those coming out of prison should be given a second chance – less than half said they would interview someone with a criminal record.

And so that’s where Blue Sky comes in. Named for Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol, the charity gives ex-offenders an opportunity. In fact, it even boasts that it’s the ‘only company in the country where you need a criminal record to work with us’. This is what John Chesters, Commercial and Enterprise Director, considers its ‘core principle’.

Since its inception, the organisation has employed over 750 ex-offenders full time – often in the waste and recycling sector – giving them ‘a real job for a real wage’. Over half (51 per cent) have left the programme with training qualifications (NVQs, construction accreditations and health and safety certificates), while 48 per cent have moved into permanent employment. Some past workers have gone on to work for contractors full-time, others have gone on to warehouse work, courier driving, painting and decorating, and one even became a mole catcher in Gloucester.

Crucially, only 15 per cent have re-offended, a quarter of the national average. “Ensuring the stability of knowing they have a job for a set period of time, rather than ad hoc bits and pieces, is far more effective in providing the right level of support to stop any reoffending”, Chesters tells me.

He adds that the charity employs people on a character basis and does not “cherry pick”, although “for obvious reasons, we wouldn’t employ someone who has arson in their history to work in a MRF”. Nonetheless, 16 per cent of its employees have been Prolific and Priority Offenders (PPOs) and around 10 per cent have been subjects of Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPAs) for managing sex offenders or those who pose a serious risk to the public.

Blue Sky has charitable status, and its work is theoretically incentivised by the Social Value Bill. Value – both social and financial – is ingrained in Blue Sky’s practice and rhetoric. Chesters informs me that Blue Sky overcomes reluctance to hire ex-offenders by “managing HR and risk”, being “cost competitive” and, most importantly, by “emphasising their social value”, adding: “Every £1 invested in Blue Sky generates over £17 in social value – savings in reduced costs of reoffending, but also the decreased support required by the family of an offender.”

Unsurprisingly, Blue Sky has found the financial crisis and the reduction of council budgets an inhibitor to growth and acquiring multi-level contracts. It has
made councils and private contractors relatively short sighted, Chesters implies, whilst leading to a decrease in the average team size.

Although it charges for the supply of its teams, all the overhead costs involved in mentoring, HR, management, and business development are covered through grants from charitable foundations and donors – with only a very small proportion coming from government in the form of Work Programme funding.

Nonetheless, Chesters tells me the charity is looking to expand, through Blue Sky North in particular, “with the ambition to double the scale of the results we achieve”. He adds that the organisation is “looking to grow [its] presence with existing clients and [is] also in advanced discussions with a number of other companies in waste and recycling”.

Blue Sky began working in the waste sector with a contract for Hillingdon Council; a team manually sorted through material as it was brought to the household waste recycling centre and helped to divert up to 130 tonnes of waste of recyclable material from landfill per week. To date, Blue Sky has maintained and improved more than 3.4 million square metres of land, and currently has over 20 mid- to long-term public and private contracts in grounds maintenance and waste management around the country.

Chesters explains: “We work in household waste recycling centres, on picking lines, in materials recovery facilities, with teams for trial bulky waste collection projects, deep cleansing crews, leafing, some as drivers, others as operatives, and generally as a team. Around 30 per cent of our work is now in waste, recycling, or streets contracts and this is likely to grow.”

Along with public-sector contacts, Blue Sky does an increasing amount in the private waste sector, with clients including Veolia, Kier and Amey. “With Amey”, Chesters comments, “we have just passed the landmark 200th employee. . . and have worked with them in Slough, Ealing, and in Gloucester on the old Enterprise contracts. A lot of this has again been grounds maintenance, but we also place teams on street care, leafing, and on collection rounds, and are flexible in our approach.”

The Managing Director of Amey’s Slough Enterprise, Richard West, says that Blue Sky employees “have been helping to improve the look of Slough for years”. Since 2006, 186 local ex-offenders have carried out grounds maintenance work through Blue Sky. The initiative has grown from three initial operatives, and the teams have been asked to carry out additional ‘bespoke work’ such as refurbishing garage doors and helping plant thousands of trees in Slough’s Jubilee Wood.

Of the 186 Blue Sky employees who have been placed with Amey, 40 per cent have moved into full-time employment and, crucially, only 14 per cent have gone on to reoffend.

Steve Finn, Blue Sky’s first employee and current Teams Director, adds: “It’s great for companies like Amey to work with us to get these guys back on track. We are saving the government a lot of money and we could not do that without the likes of Amey and people who embrace our way of working and what we do.”

And it’s not just government that benefits, but all of society. Although CIPD suggested in 2002 that a stable job cuts the probability of reoffending by ‘up to 50 per cent’, Blue Sky’s success rate shows this to be a highly conservative estimate. What the report also couldn’t quantify is the connection between gainful employment, the trust that accompanies it, and esteem.

What’s more, reducing reoffending should be important for a government intent on scything cuts and outsourcing responsibility. The number of UK prisoners has continued to rise over the previous decade, and reoffending is estimated to cost the taxpayer between £9.5 to £13 billion a year, money that could be saved through a bit of investment in organisations like Blue Sky.

Case study: Luke

Luke is a Blue Sky employee who has recently been working under an Amey contract in Slough. Having been in and out of prison for burglary offences since he was 25, he’s now 32 and has been out of prison a year. He is enjoying his job on the weeding team after stints doing strimming and painting, and is now looking for a permanent contract, which, he says, would be “the icing on the cake for me”.  The probation service uses Luke as an example of what change can happen if you work hard. “My life has completely changed for the better”, he tells me. “They have given me hope for the future when I was thinking no one would give me the chance because of my past.”  What’s more, Luke asserts that he is not unique: “Everyone I’ve worked with is doing really well; I can see a difference in people.”  He adds: “With this job, I feel accepted as part of society where before I always felt shunned. I was given a chance. They trusted me straight away and didn’t look at me like I was different… I have changed everything.”