Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an estimate of the number of hours of unpaid work completed at home as part of community sentences in each year since 2010.

Independent working projects were introduced as a temporary delivery method in response to COVID-19 restrictions and enabled the Probation Service to continue delivery during periods of lockdown.

Independent working projects were not in use prior to April 2020, therefore there is no relevant data between 2010 and that date. The practice of home working ceased in September 2022

The following number of hours of unpaid work have been recorded as completed at home as part of a community sentence.

Explanatory note

These figures differ from previously reported figures due to data recording corrections.

Independent home working ceased in September 2022, however, some recording errors where probation teams still recorded completed UPW hours under the heading of home working have resulted in some hours recorded in 2023.

The 492 hours recorded since April 2023 result primarily from data recording issues (for example, hours delivered prior to September 2022 but recorded on the system at a later date). A small number of hours relate to the continuation of home working in 4 individual cases due to specific, unavoidable factors (for example, an absence of childcare).

This data was sourced from the Probation Case Management System, nDelius. While reasonable efforts have been taken to ensure the accuracy of this data, the inaccuracy inherent in any large-scale administrative data source means data should not be assumed to be accurate to the last unit presented.