Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if she will make an estimate of the cumulative number of years of experience held by prison officers in each year since 2010.

The cumulative length of service, in years, held by band 3-5 prison officers in public sector prisons is given in the following table. Figures are given as of 31 December each year.

Although national staffing levels have improved, we are focusing on retaining the new intakes of staff. As of December 2024, 39.2% of Band 3-5 prison officers have less than 3 years of experience.

As the figures show, over the last 14 years of Conservative Government, experience of prison officers was allowed to decline. The loss of experienced staff has left the Service with a relatively inexperienced workforce, and we are improving our learning and development offer to upskill these newer colleagues.

We launched The Enable Programme, which is a dedicated HMPPS workforce transformation programme. It aims to transform prisons over the medium term, through a series of workforce and regime changes that will transform how HMPPS trains, develops, leads, and supports prison staff. This includes new training foundation training and upskilling packages for prison officers at the beginning of their service, and a strengthened succession planning and talent pipeline for prison Governors. We have already began rolling this programme out focusing on the most inexperienced staff, first.

Table 1 – Cumulative length of service(1) of band 3-5 prison officers(2) in public sector prisons in England and Wales, as at 31 December each year from 2010 to 2024(3)

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