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Prison Officers: Sick Leave

Answer

HMPPS is committed to ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of its staff in England and Wales, with all staff having access to a comprehensive occupational health service and employee assistance programme.

The number of prison officers who were signed off work for mental health reasons in publicly-managed prison are shown in the Table 1 below.

Table 1: HMPPS band 3-5 prison officers¹ who were signed off sick due to Mental and Behavioural Disorders² in public sector prisons, 2009/10 to 2018/19

Headcount
	Number of prison officers who had sick leave due to Mental and Behavioural Disorders2
12 months ending 31 Mar 2010	1,484
12 months ending 31 Mar 2011	1,415
12 months ending 31 Mar 2012	1,456
12 months ending 31 Mar 2013	1,414
12 months ending 31 Mar 2014	1,602
12 months ending 31 Mar 2015	1,422
12 months ending 31 Mar 2016	1,405
12 months ending 31 Mar 2017	1,465
12 months ending 31 Mar 2018	1,357
12 months ending 31 Mar 2019	1,939

1. Includes Band 3-4 / Prison Officer (incl. specialists), Band 4 / Supervising Officer and Band 5 / Custodial Managers.
2. Absences are categorised according to International Classification of Diseases, which is an approach used across the civil service.

While the figures show an increase in the number of individuals, the figures in 2010 represent 5.7% of the workforce and in 2019 it represents 8.5% of the workforce.

We do not collect this information for privately managed prisons, as there is no contractual requirement for us to do so. All staffing matters in privately managed prisons, including the responsibility of ensuring the availability of sufficiently trained and experienced staff to maintain safe and decent prisons, lies with contractors.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

281606

Session

2017-19

Subjects

Private sector Public sector Mental health Sick leave Prison officers

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk