Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average caseload of probation officers in England and Wales was in each of the last ten years for which figures are available.

The average caseload of Probation Officers has been calculated using data from the Workload Measurement Tool (WMT) and has been presented for the period July 2021 to June 2024. Data has been restricted to this period because the Probation Service unified in June 2021, with some Probation Officers and their caseload held by Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) prior to this point. The Probation Service does not have access to data for caseload held by CRCs and so it would not be consistent to present a time series prior to June 2021.

Table One: Probation Officer average annual caseload across England and Wales

Notes

• The data within the WMT are manually entered by Senior Probation Officers (SPOs) for those in their line management chain. These data are subject to inaccuracy as a result of the manual nature with which data are entered.

• Annual average caseload per Probation Officer has been calculated by taking the average caseload on the last day of each month in that period (an average across the 12 months).

• We are aware of data quality concerns regarding some of the data with some instances of cases being allocated to those who are not delivering caseload. There may be cases where staff who have left the Probation Service still appear to hold caseload on the WMT. Some staff on long-term absences (e.g. career breaks / long-term sickness) may still have a caseload allocated to them. There are also instances where those with no contracted hours are allocated cases without having an allocated capacity. Average caseload does not take into account the level of risk or complexity of cases, and this will have a large effect on the workload of Probation Officers.

• Data have not been presented for the period prior to June 2021, the point at which unification of the Probation Service took place. Prior to June 2021, some Probation Officers and caseload were held by CRCs, data for which is not included in the WMT. It would not be consistent to present a time series of caseload per Probation Officer before and after unification.