The Germans have a word for it. When they wish to criticise their Austrian cousins’ alleged tendency towards carelessness and inefficiency they call it schlamperei. The rough equivalent in English is ‘sloppiness’ – and a flurry of current cases suggests that it may be Britain’s new national vice, too.

How many times in recent years and months have we witnessed some public service official go before the cameras to express doubtless heartfelt – but utterly futile – apologies for failing to carry out their basic elementary duties? Failings that, all too often, have cost a human life.

The latest example of sloppiness in public service is the tragic case of Zara Aleena, the young woman murdered by a man named Jordan McSweeney as she walked home from a night out in June last year. McSweeney had an appalling record of violence: he had been released from prison nine days before Aleena’s death and had 28 previous convictions, including for assault. After the Probation Service failed to follow up on appointments McSweeney had missed, he was left free to roam the streets, looking for a victim to assault and kill.

It is certain that things have got even worse

Similarly, an Afghan migrant named Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai stabbed 21-year-old Thomas Roberts to death in Bournemouth last year after Border Force let him into Britain. They accepted that Abdulrahimzai was a 14-year-old child – although there were doubts over his true age – and failed to pick up on the fact that he had previously murdered two fellow Afghans in Serbia with an assault rifle.

It was back in 2006 that the then Labour home secretary John Reid accused his own department of not being ‘fit for purpose’. It is certain that things have got even worse since then. In the latest example of Home Office sloppiness, the department has apparently lost track of 200 children (mostly teenage Albanian boys) who have gone missing from hotels housing illegal migrants – some of whom are feared to have fallen into the hands of sex or drug trafficking gangs.

Not for nothing did Aleena’s family accuse the Probation Service of having her ‘blood on its hands’. However underfunded and overworked Britain’s public services are, it seems that there are deeper factors at work. It could be that this is down to the same lazy ‘working from home’ culture that has led to such failures as delays in issuing passports, the cancellation of hospital appointments and a general decline in the minimum standards that should mark a decent and civilised society.

After each such incident or tragedy, we are repeatedly assured that ‘lessons have been learned’, systems improved – and that these things will never happen again. Yet they do. Repeatedly. Sadly, it seems that we will all just have to accept that sloppiness is the new national normal.