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Prison Officers: Early Retirement

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 in public sectors prisons who took early retirement due to ill health in each of the last 10 years is shown in the table below.

Table 1: HMPPS band 3-5 prison officers¹ who retired early due to ill health in public sector prisons, 2009/10 to 2018/19

Headcount
	Number of prison officers who retired early due to ill health
12 months ending 31 Mar 2010	85
12 months ending 31 Mar 2011	82
12 months ending 31 Mar 2012	113
12 months ending 31 Mar 2013	129
12 months ending 31 Mar 2014	124
12 months ending 31 Mar 2015	154
12 months ending 31 Mar 2016	150
12 months ending 31 Mar 2017	142
12 months ending 31 Mar 2018	109
12 months ending 31 Mar 2019	112

1. Includes Band 3-4 / Prison Officer (incl. specialists), Band 4 / Supervising Officer and Band 5 / Custodial Managers

Although there appears to be a clear upward trend, the figures have remained fairly static, representing only 0.3% of the workforce in 2010 and 0.5% of the workforce in 2019.

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

281608

Session

2017-19

Subjects

Health Early retirement Private sector Public sector Prison officers

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk