Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the (a) average waiting time for community payback to commence one an individual has been sentenced and (b) the total number of people waiting to undergo community payback in each year since 2010.

a) The average waiting time for community payback to commence once an individual has been sentenced for years 2022/23 was 32.21 days.

b) The table below shows the number of UPW requirements waiting to undergo the first work session of their community payback requirement since 2017/18.

Due to the way data is recorded, we cannot provide relevant or comparable data prior to the 2017/18 for part b).

While due care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the data, as with any large administrative data source the possibility of errors cannot be eliminated. This data was sourced from nDelius; while data has been assured as much as practical, as with any large administrative dataset data should not be assumed to be accurate to the last value presented.

This Government has committed to invest an additional £93 million in Community Payback over the next three years to increase the number of unpaid hours worked, focusing on outdoor projects that help to improve public spaces, ensuring that people can see justice being done.