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Written Question
Probation: Staff
Thursday 25th January 2024

Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will publish the number of vacancies per region in the probation service at the end of 2023.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

Table One: Vacancies across Probation Service Regions, September 2023, all Probation Service grades

Probation Service Region

Vacancies (FTE)

PS East Midlands

28

PS East of England

274

PS Greater Manchester

0

PS Kent, Surrey & Sussex

77

PS London

457

PS North East

32

PS North West

77

PS South Central

176

PS South West

74

PS Wales

0

PS West Midlands

32

PS Yorkshire & the Humber

59

Approved Premises

0

Data shows average resource across the month, adjusted for joiners and leavers within the month. Data shown as of September 2023, aligning with the most recent HMPPS Workforce Quarterly publication. More recent data cannot be provided due to potentially pre-empting future statistical publications.

Recruitment and retention remain a priority across the Probation Service. We have injected extra funding of more than £155 million a year to deliver more robust supervision, recruit thousands more staff and reduce caseloads to keep the public safer.

We continue to focus efforts on enhanced, centralised recruitment campaigns in priority regions alongside regional recruitment to help bolster the number of applications and improve time to hire for key operational roles. We have also accelerated recruitment of trainee Probation Officers (PQiPs) to increase staffing levels, particularly in Probation Delivery Units with the most significant staffing challenges. As a result, over 4,000 PQiPs joined the service between 2020/21 and 2022/23 which will increase Probation Officer staffing numbers.

The Probation Service is in its second year of a multi-year pay deal for staff. Salary values of all pay bands will increase each year, targeted at key operational grades to improve a challenging recruitment and retention position. The Probation Service has also introduced a Prioritisation Framework to provide clarity on prioritisation of tasks and what can be reduced/paused when capacity issues begin to impact on operational delivery.

Notes

  1. Vacancies have been calculated as Required Staffing (Full Time Equivalent - FTE) minus Staff in Post (FTE).
  2. Where the number of Staff in Post (FTE) in a region exceeds Required Staffing (FTE), the number of vacancies has been shown as 0 FTE. Summing the figures in the table will not give the overall number of vacancies across the Probation Service due the surpluses in some regions that haven’t been shown in the table.
  3. Vacancies have been netted off between grades and business units. As a result, the overall vacancy figures presented mask the presence of vacancies at both grade and business unit level.
  4. Data have been taken from the Workforce Planning Tool and are subject to inaccuracy as a result of the manual nature with which returns are completed. This approach differs from the published statistics, which uses data from the Single Operating Platform (our departmental HR system).
  5. Staff in Post (FTE) has not been adjusted for long-term absences (e.g. Trainee Probation Officer training time). In addition, we have not factored in loans / temporary cover / agency and sessional.The actual resourced position will therefore differ as a result of these.
  6. Trainee Probation Officers are included in the data. Trainees spend a proportion of their time training and the remainder of their time carrying out work at a Band 3 PSO level. Both training time and time spent delivering caseload are included in the Staff in Post (FTE) calculations, which means that number of vacancies is lower than the actual gap between Required Staffing and frontline delivery.

Written Question
Probation
Thursday 14th December 2023

Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Answer of 6 March 2023 to Question HL5679,on Prisoners, what recent discussions he has had with the Chief Inspector of Probation on his timetable for completing the requested inspection of proportionality of recall decisions for people who are imprisoned for public protection.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

As Minister of State for Prisons and Probation, I met with the interim Chief Inspector of Probation on 6 December 2023, where the Inspectorate’s upcoming report on the thematic inspections of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) recall decisions was discussed. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation are due to publish their report on the thematic inspections of IPP recall decisions before the end of the year.

Departmental Publication (Guidance and Regulation)
Ministry of Justice

Oct. 19 2023

Source Page: Lambeth: Stockwell Road Probation Office
Document: Lambeth: Stockwell Road Probation Office (webpage)

Found: Lambeth: Stockwell Road Probation Office

Non-Departmental Publication (Guidance and Regulation)
HM Prison and Probation Service

Oct. 19 2023

Source Page: Lambeth: Stockwell Road Probation Office
Document: Lambeth: Stockwell Road Probation Office (webpage)

Found: Lambeth: Stockwell Road Probation Office

Non-Departmental Publication (Statistics)
HM Prison and Probation Service

Nov. 16 2023

Source Page: HM Prison & Probation Service workforce quarterly: September 2023
Document: (ODS)

Found: HM Prison & Probation Service workforce quarterly: September 2023

Non-Departmental Publication (Policy paper)
HM Prison and Probation Service

Oct. 04 2023

Source Page: South West Probation Region Action Plan
Document: Somerset PDU. (PDF)

Found: South West Probation Region Action Plan

Departmental Publication (Policy paper)
Ministry of Justice

Oct. 04 2023

Source Page: South West Probation Region Action Plan
Document: Somerset PDU. (PDF)

Found: South West Probation Region Action Plan

Written Question
Probation: Drugs
Tuesday 30th January 2024

Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much was spent by the probation service on drug treatment programs in (a) 2021, (b) 2022 and (c) 2023.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

Drug treatment in the community in England is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), via local authorities, not by the Ministry of Justice. As part of our ambitious cross-Government Drug Strategy, DHSC has invested an additional £532m over three years in increasing substance misuse treatment in England. This includes recruiting dedicated criminal justice focused staff who work across police, custody, courts and probation.

Commissioning of treatment for offenders is different in Wales, and is a partnership between Police and Crime Commissioners, local Area Planning Boards and HM Prison and Probation Service. HMPPS has contributed £9.7m to this joint commissioning over the past three years, supporting the recruitment of criminal justice focused staff and dedicated staff with lived experience.

The Ministry of Justice is committed to supporting offenders to engage with treatment to tackle the addictions that drive their crime. To do this, we have recruited Health and Justice Partnership Coordinators nationwide to build stronger links between probation and treatment providers, increased our capability to drug test offenders with a Drug Rehabilitation Requirement as part of a community sentence, and procured 650 additional laptops to enable prison leavers to attend initial appointments with community treatment pre-release.

Written Question
Probation Service: Vacancies
Wednesday 20th March 2024

Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many vacancies in the probation service there were in each region on 1 January 2024.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

The workforce position, at 31 December 2023, was 20,806 full-time equivalent (FTE) Staff in Post working in Probation Service grades (including those working in Approved Premises). This is an increase of 1,856 FTE (9.8%) since 31 December 2022.

Recruitment and retention remain a priority across the Probation Service and we have injected extra funding of more than £155 million a year since 2021 to deliver more robust supervision, recruit more staff and reduce caseloads to keep the public safer.

We have recruited a record 4,039 trainee Probation Officers between 2020/21 and 2022/23 and we expect these intakes to qualify by the end of 2024 and begin to take on Probation Officer caseloads.

Trainee Probation Officers are onboarded twice annually (including this March which will not be counted in the figures below), and this can lead to fluctuations in staffing levels across the year.

We will continue to run centralised recruitment campaigns in priority regions to help bolster the number of applications.

Table One: Vacancies across Probation Service Regions, December 2023, all Probation Service grades.

Probation Service Region

Vacancies (FTE)

PS East Midlands

21

PS East of England

277

PS Greater Manchester

15

PS Kent, Surrey & Sussex

121

PS London

463

PS North East

50

PS North West

128

PS South Central

154

PS South West

85

PS Wales

0

PS West Midlands

82

PS Yorkshire & the Humber

45

PS Approved Premises

0

Notes

  1. Data shows average resource across the month, adjusted for joiners and leavers within the month. Data shown as of December 2023, aligning with the most recent HMPPS Workforce Quarterly publication. More recent data cannot be provided due to potentially pre-empting future statistical publications.
  2. Vacancies have been calculated as Required Staffing (FTE) minus Staff in Post (FTE).
  3. Where the number of Staff in Post (FTE) in a region exceeds Required Staffing (FTE), the number of vacancies has been shown as 0 FTE. Summing the figures in the table will not give the overall number of vacancies across the Probation Service due the surpluses in some regions that haven’t been shown in the table.
  4. Vacancies have been netted off between grades and business units. As a result, the overall vacancy figures presented mask the presence of vacancies at both grade and business unit level.
  5. Data have been taken from the Workforce Planning Tool and are subject to inaccuracy as a result of the manual nature with which returns are completed. This approach differs from the published statistics, which uses data from the Single Operating Platform (our departmental HR system).
  6. Staff in Post (FTE) has not been adjusted for long-term absences (e.g. Trainee Probation Officer training time). In addition, we have not factored in loans / temporary cover / agency and sessional. The actual resourced position will therefore differ as a result of these.
  7. Trainee Probation Officers are included in the data. Trainees spend a proportion of their time training and the remainder of their time carrying out work at a Band 3 PSO level. Both training time and time spent delivering caseload are included in the Staff in Post (FTE) calculations, which means that number of vacancies is lower than the actual gap between Required Staffing and frontline delivery.
Non-Departmental Publication (Policy paper)
HM Prison and Probation Service

Oct. 04 2023

Source Page: South West Probation Region Action Plan
Document: Bristol and South Gloucestershire PDU. (PDF)

Found: South West Probation Region Action Plan