Probation Service: Agency Workers

(asked on 26th May 2022) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many agency staff are currently working in the Probation Service by region.


Answered by
Kit Malthouse Portrait
Kit Malthouse
This question was answered on 6th June 2022

The cost of agency staff for the month of April 2022, by probation region, is set out in the following table:

Region

Total Spend £

East Midlands

60,959

East of England

164,061

Greater Manchester

51,305

Kent, Surrey and Sussex

139,953

London

367,628

North East

39,419

North West

55,299

South Central

70,315

South West

46,626

Wales

14,523

West Midlands

116,020

Yorkshire and the Humber

52,778

The overall Spending Review settlement continues investment in probation services and provides significant wider investment in new initiatives to reduce reoffending and beat crime. The funding secured for the next 3 years of the spending review (April 22 – March 25) has seen an additional £155m made permanent in the baseline.

The Probation Service recruited a total of 1,007 trainees in 2020/21; we committed to recruiting a further 1,500 trainee probation officers in 2021/2022 and we met this target, recruiting 1,518 in total. The Probation Service will also recruit a further 1,500 trainee probation officers in 2022/23. In addition, we are recruiting around 500 additional unpaid work supervisors, Probation Service Officers (PSOs) and case administrators.

The number of agency staff employed changes from day to day: it would not be possible to collate regional or national totals without incurring disproportionate cost.

We do not hold information on the number of retired staff working as agency staff. This is considered to be the personal information of these agency staff and is therefore not requested.

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