Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many probation service staff providing pre-sentencing report delivery were in employment for courts in (a) England and (b) Wales in each of the last 10 years.

The number of Probation Officers and Probation Services Officers (FTE) working in the Courts internal function as of December of each year since 2017:

The above table details, from internal management information, the FTE Probation Officers and Probation Services Officers who were recorded as working in the Courts internal function in December of each year.

Data prior to 2017 is not easily obtainable or reliable as it would come from a different data source. It would not be reliable to provide a trend between the two data sources.

Staff in this internal function would have spent some (but not necessarily all) of their time delivering Pre-Sentence Reports. Staff are also required to carry out other forms of work in court e.g. triaging court lists and producing other types of reports.

There are some other staff who may carry out Pre-Sentence Reports in addition to those in the table (sessional staff and some staff from the Offender Management internal function). These staff would carry out Pre-Sentence Reports on an ad-hoc basis and their contribution would not be quantifiable.

Any change year-on-year does not necessarily mean a change in funding for these staff and could reflect of how many staff were in post and available to carry out this work.

Administrative or managerial staff are not included in these figures, although these staff play an important role in supporting PO and PSO colleagues with the delivery of Pre-Sentence Reports.