Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she is taking to increase cumulative prison officer experience.

We have inherited a prison system crisis. For far too long, our hardworking staff have had to face the brunt of prison overcrowding, which has damaged morale and put the safety and security of staff at risk. This is one of the reasons why we have taken difficult but necessary action to rescue the prison system from the point of collapse. We know that sufficient and skilled frontline staffing is fundamental to delivering safe, secure, and rehabilitative prison regimes.

On recruitment, nationally we are currently above target staffing levels for prison officers, although challenges remain in some sites with a high number of vacancies. Recruitment efforts will continue at all sites with a current or projected future need, and we have a number of targeted recruitment interventions that can be deployed where needed.

There are no specific expectations in terms of experience for a new prison officer, but all new joiners have to pass an assessment process, and complete at least 10 weeks’ training prior to starting their roles.

The loss of staff post-Covid has meant that we have significant numbers of prison officers who have recently been recruited. Due to this large intake of new staff, many colleagues lack experience – with over 40% of Band 3-5 prison officers having less than 3 years of experience. We are focused on retaining our dedicated staff, but we know it takes time to build confidence, capability, and the jailcraft skills that are essential to improve the system. HMPPS have in place over 150 New Colleague Mentors across the estate to provide support for all new staff and improve the onboarding process. HMPPS also provides colleagues with its ‘Career Pathways Framework’. This equips staff with information on career options and the variety of job roles available in HMPPS, as well as learning and development programmes.

On prison officer joiners and leavers, data can be found in Tab 8 of the quarterly HMPPS workforce statistics publication, with Tables 1 and 2 showing the number of joiners and leavers in each year to the end of March over the last 5 years, as well as the latest data in the year to the end of June. We have not included Bands 4 and 5 in the joiner data, as we recruit these grades through promotion, apart from re-instatements.

Table 1 – Prison Officer joiners

Table 2 – Prison Officer leavers

To provide the number of prison officers in supervisory roles with less than one year’s experience, we have provided data on Band 4 Supervising Officers, whose role includes overseeing the daily regime of a wing or area of the prison. Tab 4 of the quarterly HMPPS workforce statistics publication gives data on staff length of service for the main operational grades, including Band 3-5 officers. On 30 June 2024 there were four 'Band 4 / Supervising Officer' prison officers in post who had less than one year's experience. The length of service is calculated from the most recent hire date within HMPPS, not from them starting a specific role. It should be noted that if these members of staff were previously employed by HMPPS, left and rejoined, only their latest service would be counted.