Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of probation officers who left service in the past year had been in post for less than (a) one, (b) two, (c) three, (d) four, (e) five, (f) six, (g) seven and (h) eight years.

The quarterly HMPPS workforce statistics publication covers staffing information, including number of leavers by length of service and grade. The latest publication covers data for up to the period 30 September 2023. Data for the number and proportion of Probation Officers who left the department in the 12 months to 30 September 2023, by length of service, can be seen in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Probation Officer leavers by length of service, for those who left the department in the 12 months to 30 September 2023 (headcount)

Notes:

1. Length of service in HMPPS is calculated from the most recent hire date. Where staff have transferred in from another Government Department or have transferred in through HMPPS taking over a function, length of service is calculated from entry to HMPPS.

2. 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 is unlikely to be precisely accurate.

3. The length of service bands have been grouped so that the data presented is cumulative in nature (so those with less than 1 year of service will be counted in all columns).