The government has abandoned plans to link the prison and probation services through a National Offender Management System (Nomis) because it cannot afford to pay for it.

Instead the Prison Service is to receive a cut down version - called C-Nomis - to replace its limited " Lids" case management system. And the Probation Service will be forced to continue struggling with its outdated Crams software.

The decisions were announced by Justice Minister David Hanson in a written statement to parliament this week, six months after the Nomis programme was suspended due to lack of funding.

A test of the intended flagship product of the former Home Office Criminal Justice IT (CJIT) Unit, designed to provide "joined-up justice" with a system providing a single view of an offender from court to custody to probation, was due to go live in July.

But the programme was put on ice in August while a strategic review by internal Ministry of Justice auditors was carried out.

Hanson's statement this week gave no indication whether the July trial was a technical success or failure.

He said arrangements will be made "to allow sharing of information between prisons and probation areas through a new 'data share' mechanism to give read-only access to core case information to support offender management".

There are also plans to turn the prison service's OASys software into a single system across probation and prisons, and for the Delius probation case management system to be implemented only where existing software is "in urgent need of replacement".

"C-Nomis will not therefore be deployed to the National Probation Service," said Hanson.

"This has been a successful review, delivering a reformed programme that is no set to provide real operational improvements for practitioners in managing offenders alongside other reforms across the criminal justice system," he said.

The decision will relieve some probation officers who have been accused of failing to support Nomis.