Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of band 3-5 prison officers with (a) five to nine, (b) 10 to 14, (c) 15 to 19 and (d) more than 20 years' experience in the prison service have been unable to continue in their role as a result of the fitness test in the last five years.

All prison officers who joined the service after April 2001 must pass an annual fitness test in order to remain a prison officer. Staff who do not meet the annual fitness test standard will be provided with advice and support by a fitness assessor on achieving and maintaining the required fitness level. Staff have three attempts to pass before a decision will be required on the individuals’ future which may mean dismissal on medical grounds or re-grading.

For the last five years, we are able to give data on the number of people who have taken and failed their fitness test on the third attempt, as shown in table 1. The data held does not explain how many of these staff were re-graded or dismissed or the length of time they have spent in the service.

Table 2 outlines the number of Band 3 to 5 members of staff who have left the service in the last five years, broken down by their length of service. This could be for a number of reasons, one of which could be that they failed their fitness test and were dismissed.

Table 1 -

Table 2 –