Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many staff were employed in an offender management role in each year since 2010.

The National Offender Management Service delivers offender management services through both the National Probation Service (NPS) and Public Sector Prisons (PSP). Information on the numbers employed since 2010 is given below.

On the 1 June 2014, the probation delivery model changed with the 35 Probation Trusts being dissolved and the inception of a new National Probation Service (NPS) within NOMS plus the creation of 21 new privately owned Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). As a result of the changes the NPS directly manages offenders who pose the highest risk in both custody and community with the remainder of offenders in the community being managed by the CRCs.

Full Time Equivalent Staff Employed in Offender Management Roles in Probation Areas/Trusts 2010 to 2014

1. In March 2010 Probation staffing data was published at an aggregated level as those by function (of which, Offender Management is one of them) were not published as they were considered unreliable due to the change, at that time, in the way probation staffing data was collected.

2. In July 2012 the way that probation staffing data was collected changed. From that date only staff employed and funded by the Probation Trusts were included. This change did not have a significant impact on the Offender Management function and therefore the figures presented in the table are largely comparable over the period.

Staff Employed in Offender Management Roles in National Probation Service (NPS) and Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs), 31 March and 31 December 2015

^3. CRCs became private companies in February 2015 and are therefore responsible for the management of their own staffing levels. However, information on the staffing of CRCs was collected until they transferred to the private sector. At 31 December 2014 there was a full-time equivalent of 4,810 staff working within the Offender Management function in CRCs.

Public Sector Prison Service Staff Employed in Offender Management, 2014 to 2015⁴

4. Prior to 2014 Public Sector Prison Service staff working on offender management were not identified on HR records. Figures include all staff identified as working in the offender management function, including administrative support.

Note to All Tables:

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.