FOUR probation officers suspended for errors in the supervision of the man who murdered John Monckton, the City financier, are to escape disciplinary action, The Times has learnt.

The four, including an assistant chief probation officer, a senior probation officer and two probation officers, are to be reinstated only two weeks after their suspension.

A review of an official inquiry that condemned the London Probation Service’s handling of the case found no information to justify disciplinary action. Instead, the officers are to be given continuing capability assessments and provided with additional training and support. Whitehall sources are said to be shocked by the decision.

Charles Clarke announced the suspensions last month when he told MPs of a catalogue of failings by the London Probation Service over the supervision of Damien Hanson and Elliot White, the two criminals who killed Mr Monckton and seriously injured his wife at their home in Chelsea. He said that an investigation by the chief inspector of probation found there had been “sustained and repeated failings”.

The inquiry by Andrew Bridges found that the probation service’s own national standards were being sidelined and ignored. The review was carried out by a former chief probation officer of another service and concluded that there was no further information in the original report to justify disciplinary action against individuals. The review concluded that the failings were a “collective failure” by the London Probation Service.

The National Association of Probation Officers had confidently predicted that no action would be taken against the officers. But the decision will reinforce a growing public perception that no one is ever disciplined when people are killed while their attackers are supposed to be under supervision.

One senior Whitehall source described the repeated failings of the probation service to properly monitor offenders in the community as a “dagger at the heart” of the criminal justice system because it undermined public confidence in law and order. Hanson, 25, was jailed for life for the murder of Mr Monckton during a robbery in 2004.

He was supposed to be under the supervision of probation staff after his release from jail. He had served half of a 12-year sentence for attempted murder. His accomplice, White, 24, who was on bail for drugs charges at the time of the killing, was sentenced to 18 years for manslaughter. He, too, had not been properly supervised by the probation service.

The report into their failed supervision outlined a series of blunders by probation staff. They failed to include any assessment of the risk that Hanson might reoffend in a report for the Parole Board considering his release, despite an earlier assessment that there was a 91 per cent likelihood he would reoffend. Hanson’s probation officer submitted assessments of his progress in jail based on other people’s reports and had not seen him for more than a year. Hanson was excluded from part of London as a condition of his release yet was required to report to a probation officer within the exclusion zone.

After his release, probation staff failed to carry out a psychological assessment within five days, as should have happened, and failed to give evidence of the risk he posed to officers in charge of his case.

No one from the London Probation Service was available to comment last night.

The chief probation officer in Nottingham accepted responsibility for his service’s failure to supervise drug addict David Parfitt, 26, who killed constable Ged Walker, 42, in January 2003. But not one probation officer was disciplined.

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