Workforce
Lat Thursday’s (15 August 2024), HMPPS quarterly workforce figures (which show the situation at the end of June this year) make for predictably grim reading. Prison and probation staff have been hanging on for the cavalry of new recruits for quite some time now. While successive governments have invested into recruiting new staff, there is little sign of this activity paying off yet.
In the most recent April-June quarter, there were:
- Two more prison officers than the previous quarter (yes, 2 – that’s not a typo).
- No more band 2 operational support staff in prisons.
- 178 FEWER band 4 probation officers.
- 50 additional Probation Service Officers.
Prison staffing
The primary challenge for HMPPS is that while there are plenty of new recruits, there are also considerable numbers of people leaving the prison service. The headcount of band 3 to 5 prison officers who left HMPPS in the year ending 30 June 2024 was 3,168, almost identical to the previous year (when there were 3,161 leavers).
Examining reasons for leaving, 65.1% of prison officers who left in the year ending 30 June 2024 resigned from their roles (down from 65.9% in the year ending 30 June 2023).
Of the other prison officers who left HMPPS in the year ending 30 June 2024, 17.8% were dismissed and 5.6% retired; the proportion dismissed are up from 15.2% compared to previous year while the number retiring are down from 6.0%.
It is clear that the rush to recruit is causing difficulties. If anyone else can think of a public organisation with such a high dismissal rate, please let me know via the comments section below.
Another indicator of an organisation in trouble is rising sickness rates. In the year ending 30 June 2024, HMPPS staff lost an average of 11.4 working days to sickness absence. This is an increase from 11.2 average working days lost for the year ending 31 March 2024, and an increase of 1.1 days compared to the predominantly COVID-19 free year ending 31 March 2020.
Youth Custody Service staff had the highest sickness absence rate at 16.9 Average Working Days Lost (AWDL), with public sector prisons staff averaging 11.1 days off sick per year.
Probation staffing
You can see the overall probation staffing numbers in the infographic reproduced above (don’t be fooled by the big jump in April 2021, this just represents the Community Rehabilitation Companies being wound up and staff returning to the public sector).
As at 30 June 2024, there were 5,908 FTE band 3 probation services officers in post, a decrease of 844 FTE (12.5%) over the past year and a slight increase of 50 FTE (0.9%) over the quarter. In 2023/24 compared to 2022/23 we saw a lower number of trainee probation officers starting courses (543 in 2023/24 compared to 1,514 in 2022/23), which has contributed towards this net decrease. A contributing factor to the net decrease in probation services officers is the qualification of trainee probation officers, with many qualifiers taking up posts at the band 4 qualified probation officer grade.
There were 5,160 FTE band 4 probation officers, representing an increase of 533 FTE (11.5%) over the past year but, as we have seen, a decrease of 178 FTE (3.3%) compared to the previous quarter;.
There were also 1,493 FTE band 5 senior probation officers, showing a slight increase of 18 (1.2%) over the previous year and no substantial change since the last quarter.
In the last year (to 30 June again), 2,357 people left the Probation Service (an increase of 10.6%) on the previous year.
People working for probation took an average of 12.9 days off sick per year, an increase of 0.3 days over last year.
Conclusion
Given the increasing pressures on prison and probation staff, it feels that the government must find a way of reducing demand on current workers so that sufficient numbers feel able to remain in the service, while recruitment campaigns continue. It seems hard to over-estimate the scale of the challenge.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
