Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many grievances have been lodged by Prison Service staff in each prison in the last 12 months.

NOMS has a Staff Grievance policy which provides all staff with clear guidance and a framework through which they can raise workplace grievances that are dealt with promptly. The policy is line with statutory requirements and Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service principles.

The information requested is provided in the table below. A total of 860 staff raised grievances in the last year, compared to 1050 in 2009/10. This is a fall of 18%, in line with staff reductions.

All 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. However the database itself is dynamic, and where updates to the database are made late, subsequent to the taking of the extract, these updates will not be reflected in figures produced by the extract. For this reason, HR data are unlikely to be precisely accurate, and to present unrounded figures would be to overstate the accuracy of the figures. Rounding to 10 accurately depicts the level of certainty that is held with these figures.

Totals are formed from unrounded parts prior to rounding. For this reason, rounded totals may not equal the sum of their rounded parts.

~ denotes suppressed values of 5 or fewer. Low numbers are suppressed, in conjunction with the rounding policy to prevent disclosure in accordance with the Data Protection Act, 1998. This is because this information, if released, could lead to identification of the individuals concerned. This would be unlawful under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) as it would be in breach of one or more of the Data Protection Principles. We are not obliged, under section 40(2) of the Act, to provide information that is the personal information of another person if releasing would contravene any of the provisions in the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA).