Community Payback

Community Service Orders have been replaced by Community Payback Orders - unpaid work and other activities. The Order can last from 20 - 100 hours (Level 1) or 101 - 300 hours (Level 2). A Level 1 Order is now available to Justice of the Peace Courts for all offences.

A Level 1 Order should be completed within three months and a Level 2 Order within six months, unless otherwise directed by the Sheriff. The Community Payback Order places tighter restrictions on doing unpaid work and other activities. The timescales for offenders being seen, and starting unpaid work has been reduced from 21 to seven days.

Community Payback Orders allow a proportion (30% or a maximum of 30 hours) of the unpaid work hours to be used for therapeutic, groupwork or vocational learning.

There is now a statutory responsibility on councils to consult with 'prescribed persons' such as the Chief Constable, Sheriff Principal, voluntary organisations and community partnerships on the type of unpaid work to be done in the council area.

Unpaid Work Service

In South Lanarkshire, we provide over 500 unpaid work placements each year. We can do work on environmental improvements or conservation work or support local charitable organisations and community/voluntary groups in a variety of ways. We can also support people in hardship or crisis.  We have a laundry service that can provide short-term emergency assistance and ongoing work for charities and local groups as well as a Workshop.

Unpaid work also gives some people the opportunity to experience working life for the first time, giving them the confidence to look for work.

Requesting Support

• We undertake a variety of work from small individual one-off pieces to more substantial large-scale projects, however, we are not a skilled workforce and therefore work will be completed to the best of our ability
• We can provide tools and equipment, however, you or your organisation may have to provide materials
• We cannot undertake any work that may require specialist equipment or training, for example, projects of a height that may require specialist equipment
• We are unable to remove any items to waste management facilities.  Items that require a specialist uplift have to be requested by booking a special (bulk) uplift
• We cannot move white goods to different locations

If you are a charitable organisation, a community/voluntary group, or an individual with a project that you think unpaid work could support, and:

• can confirm that this work will benefit the local community
• can confirm that this work will not take any paid work away from others
• can confirm that the work undertaken will not replace South Lanarkshire Council, private or voluntary organisation core business
• are unable to complete the work on your own

Please complete our Unpaid Work request form. Please note that it takes approximately seven days for us to respond to your request.

If you have benefitted from support from the Community Payback Unpaid Work Service, we would like to ask you to complete our customer survey to find out what you thought of our service or how we might improve.

To see some of the work undertaken and that has been completed by the Community Payback Unpaid Work Service please watch our film or download a copy of our Annual Report.