Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average number of days taken was to gain security clearance for health and social care professionals seeking to commence employment in prisons in each of the last five financial years.

The average number of days taken to complete security clearance for health and social care professionals seeking employment within HMPPS from 2016 has been provided in the table below.

We are unable to provide this information for cases prior to 2016, as a different operating system was used and to which the now service provider to HMPPS does not have access.

Please note - that the information in the table for health and social care professionals has been collated based on the job title of the campaign and may be subject to slight variations.