Jenny Chapman – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jenny Chapman on 2014-04-30.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison officers were serving on detached duty in each month from January 2011 to January 2014.

Jeremy Wright

A nationally co-ordinated detached duty scheme has been operating since 21 October 2013. Information on the number of officers serving on detached duty before the introduction of the national scheme is not available. The full-time equivalent of officers provided on detached duty from the beginning of the nationally co-ordinated scheme until the 31 December 2013 is contained in the table below. Some allocations outside of the national scheme continued after October 2013 but is not included in the information provided. London region particularly allocated staff within their own region. Information collected on the staffing allocated. On occasions the resource is not actually deployed due to changes in local circumstances.

The deployment of staff between prisons on detached duty is a regular and normal part of prison resourcing. It allows staff to be allocated from prisons with the capacity to provide them, to those where additional staffing is required. On average over the three month period (October to December 2013), less than 1% of staff were provided on detached duty. A large proportion of the capacity was available from prisons that were in the process of closure or going through a re-role. This process temporarily releases a number of officers who are not supplied for specific occasions but are sent and received on a shift pattern throughout the week.

Full Time Equivalent of Officers Working on Detached Duty ¹

– 21 October 2013 to 31 December 2013

¹ Detached duty figures are not published but other staffing data is published up to 31 December 2013 and therefore information is only presented up until that date.