Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to improve the levels of (a) recruitment, (b) morale and (c) retention of probation staff.

In April 2021 we published the first national Recruitment and Retention Strategy for the Probation Service which identified several key areas of focus.

The Probation Service is committed to increasing recruitment to fill Probation Officer vacancies, particularly in areas with significant local employment market challenges.

In 2020/21, we recruited a record 1,007 trainee probation officers. We are further increasing our recruitment to unprecedented levels, with a target 1,500 trainee Probation Officers being recruited this financial year (2021/2022).

We have identified six common drivers of attrition across those regions where it is more challenging to recruit and retain probation officers. These drivers include:

o Pay and benefits

o Newly Qualified Officer (NQO) attrition

o High caseloads

o Lack of career progression

o Wellbeing

o Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination

Work is underway to address these six drivers of attrition, and we are developing solutions to help regions retain staff which will strengthen our ability to help manage staff wellbeing and resilience.

We introduced three new pathways to help us retain experienced staff approaching retirement. This allows them to continue their current roles on more flexible terms or utilise their experience to guide new starters by undertaking new roles as Practice Tutor Assessors or Learning Coaches, which reduces the pull on existing experienced Probation Officers to help with this workload.