The Strategic Oversight of PPANI


The Strategic Management Board meets on a quarterly basis and is chaired by a senior representative from the PSNI, the Probation Board and the Prison Service on a three year rotational basis.  The Prison Service currently holds this position.  The role of the chair is to facilitate discussion between Strategic Management Board members and in doing so promote, drive and encourage the strategic oversight of the operation of the arrangements in line with the Guidance provided by the Department of Justice under Article 50 of the Criminal Justice (NI) Order 2008.  The chair does not carry accountability for decisions made by the board.  Accountability rests with the individual agencies involved with delivering their role in the public protection arrangements in Northern Ireland.

Strategic

The team


Michael McAvoy

Deputy Director, safer communities, Department of Justice, Chair of PPANI Strategic Management Board

Anthony McNally

Anthony McNally
Detective Chief Superintendent, Head of Public Protection Branch, Community Safety Department

Detective Chief Superintendent McNally has 18 years policing experience, joining in the first intake of the new PSNI officers in 2002. From 2008 to 2013 he was part of UK wide High Potential Development Scheme and graduated in 2013 from Warwick University Business School with an MSc in Leadership and Management.His career has been broadly split between uniformed and Detective roles. His uniformed experience includes being the Area Commander for Craigavon from 2011 to 2014 and West Belfast from 2014 to 2016. His Detective career has included senior roles in both reactive and proactive complex investigations, and he also spent 3 years in Intelligence Branch as a Superintendent from 2016 to 2019. He took over the role as PSNI Head of Public Protection in May 2020.

Stephen Hamilton

Stephen Hamilton
Director of Operations, Probation Board for Norther Ireland

Stephen Hamilton is a qualified social worker, who has worked for Probation for 20 years. He has been recently appointed as Director of Operations. He has lead responsibility for PBNI’s work in the prison establishments; for programmes and psychology services within PBNI; and for the work of probation in Public Protection.

Alan Smyth

Alan Smyth
Head of Licensing, Legislation and Public Protection, Northern Ireland Prison Service

Alan Smyth is Head of Licensing, Legislation and Public Protection in the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS).He has primary responsibility for releasing offenders into the community on a range of Department of Justice licences.This work involves working closely with other criminal justice agencies to ensure that appropriate and proportionate licence conditions are put in place that allow offenders to be managed in the community following release.Alan is also responsible for NIPS's public protection responsibilities, for overseeing and managing all Judical Reviews taken against NIPS, prisons related legislation and operational policy, the Prison Service's human rights and equality responsibilities in relation to offenders, prison policy on victims, the NIPS Claims Unit, the Centralised Custody Office and for a range of other judicial matters that impact on the Prison Service including prisoner transfers and the recall of life sentence prisoners.

Bronagh Muldoon

Bronagh Muldoon
Service Manager - NSPCC

Bronagh is a Service Manager with the NSPCC, she oversees both the development and operational decisions for all Children’s services within Belfast.Bronagh has 26 years’ experience within the sector having qualified as a Social worker in 1993.Initially Bronagh worked within the statutory sector before moving on to the Voluntary sector when she secured a management post with the NSPCC in 2003.Bronagh has remained at the NSPCC for 17 years and has held various management posts during this time .Mostly regarding service delivery within the Domestic and Sexual abuse theme.She’s a member of SBNI Belfast Panel and Chair of the Safeguarding committee for Archdiocese of Armagh for the Catholic Church.She is the chair of Victims subgroup of PPANI.

Colm McCafferty

Colm McCafferty
Interim Director of CYPS

Colm McCafferty was appointed as the Southern Trust’s Interim Director of Children and Young People’s Services in September 2021.  He has over 29 years’ experience in children’s Social Services and over 10 years senior management experience. Prior to moving to his current role he was Assistant Director for Corporate Parenting (Looked after Children Services) in the Trust from 2015 – 2021.Mr McCafferty is a member of the Regional SBNI Safeguarding Board for NI and chairs the Southern Outcomes Group, established to take forward integrated planning and service delivery for children and families. Mr McCafferty is a member of the Regional Public Protection Arrangements Northern Ireland (PPANI) Strategic Management Forum.He has extensive experience of social care service reform and has a particular interest in developing placement capacity and supports for Looked after Children in addition to improving the range and accessibility of preventative health and social care supports to children, families and communities.

Richard Tanswell

Richard Tanswell

Latest News
Go to our news page