23/02/2022
Police Oracle
Work with offenders on the latest HMPPS workforce statistics.
Workforce figures from Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) portray contrasting pictures of the health of the prison and probation services.
The figures provide information on the number of staff employed across HMPPS on 31 December 2021.
Prisons
There were 22,156 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) band 3-5 prison officers in post (as at 31 December 2021). Band 3-5 prison officers are the key operational grades, consisting band 3 prison officers, band 4 officer specialists, band 4 supervising officers, and band 5 custodial managers.
This figure represents a fall of 169 FTE (0.8%) prison officers in the last quarter of the year. When you combine this fall in staff with the hundreds of staff off sick with COVID (the number of prisoners testing positive for COVID last month was 6,884, the highest number of positive cases recorded in a single month since the start of the pandemic, and an increase of 2,567 compared to the previous month and for other reasons, it is no surprise that we are hearing so many stories of major staff shortages from across the prison estate.
There was also a small but significant fall in the number of band 2 operational support staff in post on 31 December, 101 or 2% fewer than the previous quarter.
Of course, numbers on their own don’t give an accurate picture of the challenges facing prison governors. There has been much concern over the last three years on the large proportion of relatively inexperienced prison staff. The latest statistics present a mixed picture.
On the one hand, the proportion of band 3-5 prison officers with less than 3 years’ service at 31 December 2021 fell to 28.9% compared to 34.6% the previous year. Conversely, the proportion of officers in post with 10 years or more of experience decreased by 4.5 percentage points from 41.9% at 31 December 2020 to 37.4% at 31 December 2021.
The single biggest area of concern is the high rate at which frontline prison officers are leaving the service. More than one in eight (12.6%) of band 3-5 prison officers left the service in 2021, this is an increase of 3.4 percentage points (or more than a quarter) compared to the year ending 31 March 2021.
The picture is stark, there are fewer prison officers, a sizeable proportion (more than a quarter) are inexperienced and the service is struggling to retain both new recruits and experienced officers.
Probation
The picture for the probation service is brighter with signs that HMPPS is at least starting to address the chronic probation officer shortages which have blighted service delivery in recent years. Key grades in the Probation Service include band 3 probation services officers, band 4 probation officers (collectively known as probation practitioners), as well as band 5 senior probation officers.
Staff who are training to be a probation officer work as a probation services officer during their training, so a proportion of the probation services officers in post will be working towards the professional probation officer qualification.
On 31 December the last year there were 4,490 FTE band 4 probation officers in post – an increase of 202 (or 4.7%) in the last quarter. There were also 5,739 FTE band 3 probation services officers in post, no change in the last quarter. Finally, there were 1,218 FTE senior probation officers, again no change in the last three months.
HMPPS is looking to recruit one thousand new probation officers so it is to be hoped that these figures rise further in the next bulletin, due out in May.