Workforce
Everyone knows that our prison and probation services are facing one of the worst crises in their history. The Government has been trying to tackle the problem by easing demand via the early release scheme and the sentencing review led by David Gauke. Another part of the strategy is to try to get staffing levels up. Last Thursday’s (20 February 2025) HMPPS quarterly workforce figures (which show the situation at the end of December last year) show that if anything, things are getting worse.
Headline figures
The bullet points below show the workforce figures on 31 December 2024. On this date there were:
- 23,062 FTE band 3-5 prison officers in post – a slight decrease of 136 FTE (0.6%) since 31 December 2023 and a significant decrease of 509 FTE (2.2%) prison officers compared to 30 September 2024.
- 5,510 FTE band 2 prison operational support staff in post – an increase of 87 FTE (1.6%) since 31 December 2023 and a slight decrease of 82 FTE (1.5%) operational support staff since 30 September 2024.
- 5,283 FTE band 4 probation officers in post – an increase of 334 FTE (6.8%) since 31 December 2023 but a decrease of 153 FTE (2.8%) compared to 30 September 2024.
- 5,316 FTE band 3 probation services officers: a decrease of 988 FTE (15.7%) since 31 December 2023 and a decrease of 270 FTE (4.8%) since 30 September 2024, caused by a lower number of trainee probation officers this year.
These figures become more grim when we remember that these figures also included prison officers from Lowdham Grange which moved into the public sector.
Prison joiners & leavers
The chart reproduced above shows a quarterly trend of band 3 to 5 appointments and leavers since 2018/19. Over the year to 31 December 2024, 3,491 band 3 to 5 officers were appointed (consisting of direct new recruits and existing staff who converted to a band 3 officer grade), a decrease of 2,012 (36.6%) compared to 5,503 in the previous year.
Looking at the quarterly figures, the headcount of new band 3 to 5 officer appointments decreased by 336 (46.8%) from 718 between July and September 2024 to 382 between October and December 2024.
The headcount of band 3 to 5 prison officers who left HMPPS in the year ending 31 December 2024 was 3,078, which is an increase of 34 (1.1%) compared to the year ending 31 December 2023. Examining reasons for leaving, 66.6% of prison officers who left in the year ending 31 December 2024 resigned from their roles (up from 65.3% in the year ending 31 December 2023). Of the other prison officers who left HMPPS in the year ending 31 December 2024, 20.0% were dismissed and 5.8% retired; the proportion dismissed is up from 15.6% compared to previous year while the number retiring is up from 5.9%.
It is difficult to know whether to be more troubled or relieved that 20% of prison staff leaving the service are dismissed. The statisticians note that following the staff survey in 2023 one of HMPPS’ priorities was to set a positive culture through high professional standards. Specialist teams have been established to ensure those standards are met and that interventions can be put in place where necessary.
Probation recruitment
The new government has set a target of recruiting 1,000 new probation officers by the end of next month and a further 1,300 by March 2026. The next set of workforce figures will show whether the first of these targets has been achieved but the outcome is obviously unimportant unless the overall number of staff increases.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
