Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison officer vacancies at each grade there were in each prison in each month since January 2014.

Prison Officer vacancies are defined as a deficit of staff in post compared to benchmark staffing level. Benchmarks have now been agreed for most public sector Prison Service establishments which allow the reporting of staffing levels against benchmarks at prison level. Prior to the agreement of staffing benchmarks the inconsistency and uncertainty in the data held by the centre meant it was not possible to provide an accurate prison by prison breakdown of vacancies. The first set of verified data using agreed benchmarks was for 30 June 2014.

NOMS is aiming to recruit approx 1,700 Prison Officers in 2014/15, into post or onto merit lists. Some of these are already in post. This would be sufficient to fill all current vacancies and those created by attrition by March 2015. Detached duty is being used in the short term to fill vacancies.

Band 3 to 5 Officers in Post at 30 June 2014 and Benchmark Target

Notes

1) Although benchmarks are agreed they are still subject to review and can therefore change if necessary to meet the requirements at the establishment to ensure a safe, decent and secure environment.

2) Benchmark figures do not include transition staff at establishments.

3) Only establishments with a finalised benchmark are included within the table. Benchmarks have not been set for the four Immigration removal Centres which NOMS runs for the Home Office, Buckley Hall which was benchmarked in the first competition and the five establishments commissioned by the Youth Justice Board. Benchmarks for women’s establishments are being finalised and are planned to be concluded by December 2014.

4) NOMS manages vacancies through the use of payment plus for officer grades, overtime, agency staff and through the use of temporary detached duty.

5) New capacity opening at Hull and Chelmsford has recently increased the benchmark requirement for which recruitment will be required.

6) Staff in Post figures are rounded to the nearest 10, with numbers ending in 5 rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias. As with all HR databases, extracts are taken at a fixed point in time to ensure consistency of reporting. Rounding to 10 accurately depicts the level of certainty with which information is held. However, it does mean that the level of shortfalls presented here is the difference of the benchmark to the rounded staff numbers and will therefore differ slightly from the unrounded figures which are used internally.