Prison Officers: Sick Leave

(asked on 24th July 2019) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison officers were signed off work for mental health reasons in (a) publicly-managed and (b) privately-managed prisons in each of the last 10 years.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
This question was answered on 9th September 2019

HMPPS is committed to ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of its staff in England and Wales, with all staff having access to a comprehensive occupational health service and employee assistance programme.

The number of prison officers who were signed off work for mental health reasons in publicly-managed prison are shown in the Table 1 below.

Table 1: HMPPS band 3-5 prison officers1 who were signed off sick due to Mental and Behavioural Disorders2 in public sector prisons, 2009/10 to 2018/19

Headcount

Number of prison officers who had sick leave due to Mental and Behavioural Disorders2

12 months ending 31 Mar 2010

1,484

12 months ending 31 Mar 2011

1,415

12 months ending 31 Mar 2012

1,456

12 months ending 31 Mar 2013

1,414

12 months ending 31 Mar 2014

1,602

12 months ending 31 Mar 2015

1,422

12 months ending 31 Mar 2016

1,405

12 months ending 31 Mar 2017

1,465

12 months ending 31 Mar 2018

1,357

12 months ending 31 Mar 2019

1,939

  1. Includes Band 3-4 / Prison Officer (incl. specialists), Band 4 / Supervising Officer and Band 5 / Custodial Managers.
  2. Absences are categorised according to International Classification of Diseases, which is an approach used across the civil service.

While the figures show an increase in the number of individuals, the figures in 2010 represent 5.7% of the workforce and in 2019 it represents 8.5% of the workforce.

We do not collect this information for privately managed prisons, as there is no contractual requirement for us to do so. All staffing matters in privately managed prisons, including the responsibility of ensuring the availability of sufficiently trained and experienced staff to maintain safe and decent prisons, lies with contractors.

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