Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of new probation officers left the service within two years of joining in each year since 2010.

Table 1 shows the number of qualified probation officers who joined in each financial year. Of those probation officers who joined in that particular year, we have shown the volume and percentage of those who left the service within two years.

Table 1 - Percentage of all Band 4 Probation Officers Joiners who left within two years^1,2 - based on date of joining, 2015/16 to 2020/21, and 12 months to September 2021

(headcount)

Source:

HMPPS - Oracle HRMS and Single Operating Platform

Data quality and scope:

Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. Movements due to machinery of Government changes or due to staff transferring to or from the private sector as a result of changes in the management of establishments are not included in these tables.

(p) Figures relating to current financial year are provisional and may be subject to change in future iterations of the HMPPS workforce statistical release.

Notes:

1). Movements due to machinery of Government changes or due to staff transferring to or from the private sector as a result of changes in the management of establishments are not included in these tables. Such movements are: 8,430 FTE staff transferring into HMPPS from Probation Trusts in June 2014 and more than 7,000 staff from private sector Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRC) came together with probation staff already in the public sector in the new Probation Service in late June 2021.

2). Length of service in HMPPS calculated from most recent hire date. Where staff have transferred in from another Government Department or have transferred in through HMPPS taking over a function, length of service is calculated from entry to HMPPS.

3). The service of NPS staff in Probation Trusts prior to the creation of the NPS on 1 June 2014 is not included, therefore the earliest full annual data available is from 2015/16. Figures presented here therefore do not represent the full experience of Probation Officers.

4). Data is based on hire date and not the leaving date. For example, if someone joined in 2018/19 but left in 2020/21 then they will be recorded against the year they joined (2018/19 not 2020/21). Please note, this approach is different to how data in published and so this will not match published statistics.

5). Due to the approach outlined, figures for most recent periods will be lower, as 2 years will not have elapsed since time of joining.