A 24-HOUR ‘Twitterthon’ will see Bury’s top-performing probation officers raising awareness about the good work they do.

Staff at the borough’s probation office in Castlecroft Road, Bury, supervise offenders on community sentences and prisoners on licence from jail.

Their role is to protect the public and increase public safety by holding offenders to account for their actions while also supporting their rehabilitation — and they are taking to the internet to tell people about it.

Today, staff will be updating Twitter with information about the work of probation and what they do using the account @gmptprobationPR and the hashtag #GMPT24.

Nigel Elliott, assistant chief executive of the Greater Manchester Probation Trust, said: “It is easy to overlook the work of probation because the service only really grabs media headlines when things go wrong.

“That is why I am delighted that staff across the trust are participating in a Twitterthon that is aimed at raising awareness about our work.

“We have a dedicated team of professionals who work tirelessly to ensure that offenders are complying with the orders they have been sentenced to by magistrates and judges, and who also strive to support offenders to help them once again become positive members of their community.”

Bury is a top-performing area with 83 per cent of orders completed — substantially above the national average.

As of November this year, there were 429 offenders on community sentences in Bury who are being managed by the borough’s office.

Staff are also supervising 199 prisoners on licence and 206 offenders on Community Payback.

Mr Elliott added: “We work closely with a range of agencies — including the police, local authority and prison service — to protect the community, and I hope that people who are able to follow Twitter will get a flavour of the range of tasks that we undertake.”