Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his department will publish the average time-in-role for prison governors in each of the last 10 calendar years.

The latest published HMPPS workforce statistics covers the period up to 30 September 2025 so the latest calendar year available is for 2024. Figures showing the average length of time spent in post for public sector prison governors in England and Wales as at 31 December 2015 to 2024 and 30 September 2025 are given in the table below.

The figures relate to the governing governors’ time in the role they were in on the given date only and exclude previous governor service. In addition, figures do not include deputy governors temporarily covering a governing governor role.

Table 1 - Average (mean) length of service (in years) of governors in the public sector prison role they were in on the given date, as at 31 December 2015 to 2024, and as at 30 September 2025.

Notes:

1. Figures show average length of service of the prison governor role on the given date.

2. Figures relate to governing governors only (band 10-11) and do not include deputy governors temporarily covering the role.

3. The number of governors and prisons change over time, as vacancies arise and as prisons transfer between the public and private sector.

4. Each governor is only included once per given date, though it is possible to temporarily be governor of more than one prison at a time.

5. As with all HR databases, extracts are taken at a fixed point in time and is dependent on staff completing the details correctly. The database itself is dynamic and where updates to the database are made late, subsequent to the taking of the extract, or are incorrect then these updates will not be reflected in figures produced by the extract. For this reason, HR data are unlikely to be precisely accurate and may not match local data.