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Written Question
Prison Officers: Sick Leave
Monday 9th January 2023

Asked by: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will list the ten prisons which currently have the highest proportion of prison officers off sick and unable to come to work.

Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)

The quarterly HMPPS workforce statistics publication covers staffing information, including the working days lost due to sickness absence. The latest publication covers data for the period up to 30 September 2022.

Therefore, the latest data available to provide a ‘current’ proportion of sick absence is for 30 September 2022.

The ten prisons which had the highest proportion of band 3-5 officers who took time off sick on 30 September 2022 is shown in table 1 below.

Table 1: Snaphot of top 10 prisons with highest proportion of band 3-5 officers1 off sick on 30 September 20222(p)

Prison

Headcount of Band 3-5 officers off sick

Headcount of Total band 3-5 officers employed on 30 September 2022

Proportion of band 3-5 officers sick as a percentage of all band 3-5 officers in post

Werrington

25

137

18.25%

Garth

40

284

14.08%

Onley

22

174

12.64%

Woodhill

36

307

11.73%

Foston Hall

13

123

10.57%

North Sea Camp

6

59

10.17%

The Mount

20

200

10.00%

Wandsworth

38

382

9.95%

Liverpool

27

288

9.38%

Thorn Cross

8

86

9.30%

1. Includes Band 3-4 / Prison Officer (incl specialists), Band 4 / Supervising Officer and Band 5 / Custodial Managers.

2. Includes staff who either had sick end date on or after 30 September 2022 or did not have a sick end date at all, as at time of data being produced for September 2022 HMPP workforce publication

(p) Figures relating to current financial year are provisional

In the 12 months to 30 September 2022, band 3-5 officers lost an average of 17.3 workings days. This is an increase from 16.6 working days compared to the 12 months to 31 March 2022. Trends from 2017 are shown below.

Table 2: Band 3-5 officer sickness, 12 months to 31 March 2017 to 12 months to 30 September 2022

12 months to..

Working days lost

Average staff in post

Average Working Days Lost1

31 March 2017

210,880

18,104

11.6

31 March 2018

196,525

19,581

10.0

31 March 2019

225,142

22,223

10.1

31 March 2020

255,782

22,352

11.4

31 March 2021

301,045

21,854

13.8

31 March 2022

365,520

22,154

16.5

30 September 2022

379,439

21,958

17.3

1. Average working days lost per member of staff is calculated as number of working days lost to sickness divided by the average number of full time equivalent staff for a year.


Written Question
Prison Accommodation
Friday 16th December 2022

Asked by: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisons allow more than half of the prisoners in that prison out of cell for two hours or less a day.

Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)

Information about time out of cell for adult prisoners is not held by the Ministry of Justice, as it would require detailed daily monitoring of out-of-cell activity of each prisoner in each establishment. There is no current central instruction prescribing the amount of time prisoners should spend out of their cells. There is a clear commitment, however, to the delivery and performance management of time spent in purposeful activity. Governors have the flexibility to deliver balanced regimes that maintain an appropriate level of time out of cell on a range of activities such as education and employment, which meet the needs of the establishment’s population, with a heavy focus on reducing re-offending. This is alongside basic access to time in the open air and domestic services, such as showers. The Prisons Strategy White Paper (Prisons Strategy White Paper - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)) sets out the Government’s commitment to prison regime reform. A new Purposeful Activity performance measure has been introduced for the 2022-23 performance period, and additional measures are in place for attendance at work, education, interventions and services.


Written Question
Prison Officers: Sick Leave
Friday 16th December 2022

Asked by: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will list the ten prisons which had the highest proportion of officers off sick over the past 12 months; and if he will make an estimate of the average proportion of total prison officers off sick as a percentage of the total workforce at each of those prisons.

Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)

The quarterly HM Prison and Probation Service workforce statistics publication covers staffing information, including the working days lost due to sickness absence.

The ten prisons which had the highest proportion of band 3-5 officers who had at least one period of sickness absence in the 12 months to 30 September 2022 is shown in table 1 below.

Table 1: Top 10 prisons with highest proportion of band 3-5 officers1 with at least one period of sickness absence2, in the 12 months to 30 September 2022(p)

Prison

Band 3-5 officers off sick at least once in period

Total band 3-5 officers employed in period

Proportion of band 3-5 officers sick as a percentage of all band 3-5 officers in post

All staff workforce employed in period

Proportion of band 3-5 officers sick as a percentage of all staff workforce in post

Werrington

148

161

91.9%

274

54.0%

Send

124

139

89.2%

238

52.1%

Hindley

215

244

88.1%

380

56.6%

Liverpool

283

322

87.9%

530

53.4%

Grendon

134

154

87.0%

314

42.7%

Full Sutton

430

496

86.7%

711

60.5%

Isle of Wight

302

349

86.5%

627

48.2%

Eastwood Park

172

199

86.4%

329

52.3%

Littlehey

243

282

86.2%

502

48.4%

Downview

141

165

85.5%

280

50.4%

1. Includes Band 3-4 / Prison Officer (incl specialists), Band 4 / Supervising Officer and Band 5 / Custodial Managers.

2. Individuals are only counted once, even if they have more than one episode of sickness absence recorded.

(p) Figures relating to current financial year are provisional.


Written Question
Cemeteries
Tuesday 29th March 2022

Asked by: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to section 2.23 of his Department's guidance entitled Burial Grounds: Guidance for Managers, which states that burial authorities may contribute towards the provision or maintenance of burial grounds in which their inhabitants may be buried, whether burial grounds in 2.23 includes churchyards.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

Paragraph 2.23 of Burial Grounds: Guidance for Managers refers to section 214 of the Local Government Act 1972. Subsection 214(6) provides that a local authority burial authority may contribute towards the provision or maintenance of any cemetery in which their inhabitants are buried. For the purposes of section 214(6), the definition of “cemetery” (in subsection 214(8)) is “a burial ground or any other place for the interment of the dead (including any part of any such place set aside for the interment of a dead person’s ashes).” This would include a churchyard if it is used as a burial ground.


Written Question
Charities
Tuesday 5th March 2019

Asked by: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that (a) charitable organisations will be paid for resettlement support services they have provided under contract to Working Links (b) those services are able to continue.

Answered by Rory Stewart

As you know, Working Links went into administration on 14 February. Probation services in Dorset, Devon and Cornwall; Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire; and Wales, transferred to Kent, Surrey and Sussex Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC), owned by Seetec, on 15 February. The probation supply chain in these areas will now be the responsibility of Kent, Surrey and Sussex CRC and Seetec.

We recognise the importance of Voluntary and Community Sector organisations and are in continued dialogue, engaging directly with them. Service improvements and stability in probation services are our priorities and we are working closely with all affected organisations, alongside Seetec, to monitor the transition and mobilisation of services against contractual obligations.


Written Question
Prisoners: Albania
Monday 16th April 2018

Asked by: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Secretary of State for Justice, how many Albanian nationals are in the prison population in England and Wales; and what proportion of the total prison population that number represents.

Answered by Rory Stewart

As at 31 December 2017, the latest published figures, there were 84,373 persons detained in prisons and the HM Prison and Probation Service run Immigration Removal Centre. Of these, 716 were recorded as Albanian nationals. Albanian nationals represent 0.85% of the total prison population.

Any foreign national who comes to our country and abuses our hospitality by breaking the law should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them. More than 40,000 foreign national offenders have been removed from the UK since 2010, with a record number of over 6,300 removed in 2016/17.

A Prisoner Transfer Agreement is in place between the UK and the Republic of Albania, and we are working closely with Albanian authorities to speed up and significantly increase transfer rates.


Written Question
Pupils: Attendance
Tuesday 12th December 2017

Asked by: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) fines for school attendance orders were issued by courts in England, and of that number how many were unpaid and (b) prison sentences there were for non-payment of school attendance orders, and of those numbers how many were for Gypsy and Traveller children in the last year for which figures are available.

Answered by Dominic Raab

There were 122 fines imposed in the Magistrates’ Courts for failure to comply with the requirements of a school attendance order during the financial year 2016-17, and 129 in the latest 12 month period for which data is available (July 2016 – June 2017). It is not possible to identify how many of these relate to Gypsy and Traveller children as HMCTS do not record this information.

Information on the number of unpaid fines and the number of prison sentences for non-payment of school attendance orders could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.


Written Question
Prisons: Ministers of Religion
Wednesday 15th March 2017

Asked by: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether there are vacancies for Anglican chaplains in prisons in (a) London, (b) Surrey and (c) Kent.

Answered by Sam Gyimah

There are currently vacancies for an Anglican Chaplain at HMP Brixton, (London), HMP Wandsworth (London) and HMP Standford Hill (Kent). The vacancies at Brixton and Standford Hill will be advertised; the vacancy at Wandsworth has been filled with a new appointee due to start on 1 April.


Written Question
Prisons: Ministers of Religion
Thursday 9th March 2017

Asked by: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what (a) Anglican, (b) Roman Catholic, (c) Free Church, (d) Muslim, (e) Hindus, (f) Sikh, (g) Jewish and (h) other faiths chaplaincy vacancies there are in each prison in England and Wales.

Answered by Sam Gyimah

The information requested is not held centrally and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.


Written Question
Criminal Records: Employment
Thursday 16th February 2017

Asked by: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress the Government has made on its ban the box initiative; which businesses have signed up to that initiative; how many employees of her Department have unspent convictions; what progress has been made on that initiative across the wider public sector; and if she will make a statement.

Answered by Sam Gyimah

The Government is committed to improving diversity of opportunity and creating an inclusive working environment that attracts the best talent and makes the most of potential skills and productivity of ex-offenders in the community.

The Civil Service has committed to banning the box, following the former Prime Minister's commitment in February 2016. Business in the Community's Ban the Box campaign was formally launched across the Civil Service on the 17th October 2016.

A number of departments are already operating their recruitment process in line with the Ban the Box principles. This approach is now being formalised across the Civil Service and departments are working to implement this initiative quickly and effectively to ensure their roles attract the widest possible range of applicants. The Cabinet Office is responsible for the Ban the Box policy in the Civil Service.

The Ministry of Justice is supportive of the initiative and will explore options for promoting Ban the Box across both the Public and Private sector to increase opportunities available to offenders.

Information about the number of business signed up to the initiative is not held by the MoJ. The Business in the Community campaign maintain the list and it can be accessed here: http://www.bitc.org.uk/programmes/ban-box/who-has-banned-box-0

The information requested relating to how many MoJ employees have unspent convictions could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.